Population Dynamics
by Fifteen1413
Summary: Felicity Harbor, younger sister of Kara Harbor, is a genius. Her brain, however, has limited use for fighting witches, and Felicity waits for the day she can join her sister as a magical girl. When an Incubator show up to Felicity with a message instead of a contract, however, they are thrown into a challenge on an unimaginable scale, with only eleven days left to fix it. [OC only]
1. Part I: Maximum Sustainable Yield

Population Dynamics

-or-

The Sudden Rise and Tragic Death of Felicity Harbor

A fan fiction in three parts, set in the universe of Madoka Magica

Part I: Maximum Sustainable Yield

Felicity stopped Kara at the door, putting her arm out across the frame as to bar all entrance to the little shack. Kara raised an eyebrow at her, trying to brush her arm aside.

"Do you mind letting me in?" Kara asked. There was a brief pause. "Actually, why are you here anyway?"

"I came here after school." Felicity said. "I'm allowed here, you know. You keep telling me not to come, but mom says you can't stop me."

"It's nearly midnight." Kara said. "What do you think mom would say if I told her you were up at midnight playing in a clubhouse on a school night?"

"You wouldn't say, 'cuz then I'd tell her about your secret." Felicity said.

"You wouldn't dare." Kara said, pushing through the much younger Felicity's blockade with very little effort and stepping into the room beyond. "No one would believe you if you did, anyway."

"Hey!" a mirthful voice called from the couch in the living room, which made up a good sixty percent of the building. "Kara! Come here, grab a beer!" Felicity rolled her eyes. She hated Janet, but Kara and Janet had been friends since forever, and Kara wouldn't let a little something like spending time with her little sister get in the way of that.

"Janet, I'm eighteen." Kara said. "So are you, for that matter."

"Eh, whatever." Janet said. "They're cold and cheep and I know where to get 'em." when Kara let out a deep sigh, Janet laughed again. "It's not like I'm offering them to Felicity. Chill out, girl."

"You really shouldn't." Kara said. Janet stood up and handed Kara her beer.

"Then be the responsible adult and take it from me." Janet said. "Come on. Just one? Hell, Kara, you just got back from saving god knows how many people. Have a little fun, at least for your fifth."

Kara paused. "It is the fifth, isn't it?" she sighed, looking at the beer. "Five years today."

"Tomorrow, technically." Janet said. "So if you want to use the celebratory excuse, you should wait another two minutes, but yeah. Five years now."

Felicity sighed. "You two are going to start talking about old times again like little old ladies, aren't you." she said flatly, sitting down on the couch, making a point not to look at Janet.

"No, we'll spare you from the terribly boring stories of magical adventure." Janet said teasingly, and Felicity blushed. "I know how much you hate it."

"I didn't mean that." Felicity said. "I just didn't want you to get sappy."

"It's not sappy, it's nostalgia." Janet corrected, and Kara settled down next to Felicity, putting her arm around her. Felicity squirmed for a moment, but then sighed, giving up.

"I can still remember the look on that Incubator's face when you popped your wish." Janet said. "It was priceless."

"I think you're misremembering." Kara said. "I don't think I've ever so much as seen a single one of them change expressions. I don't even know if they can. Sarah, though, she flipped out."

"Oh, yeah." Janet laughed. "She couldn't believe it worked. She accused you of cheating, if I remember correctly."

"I couldn't believe it worked, either. It felt like I had asked the genie for a thousand more wishes and he said 'damn, I hadn't thought of that.'" Kara said. "Michaela was so happy with us, I remember."

"It's just us left, though, isn't it?" Janet said. "Sarah, Josephine, Michaela, Lu..."

"Yeah. Just us." Kara said. "It's been that way for a while now, Janet. Almost two years since Sarah died, and she was the last."

"I know, but still..." Janet said, sighing heavily.

"You're getting sappy again." Felicity accused, and Kara's sad smile broke into a more happy one. She tussled Felicity's hair.

"Sorry, Fill." she said, and Felicity crinkled her nose up, getting laughs from the two older girls. Kara knew she hated that nickname. "You're right, we should be celebrating. Five years as a magical girl, and I haven't died yet." Kara said. "Pretty rare, from what I know. Turnover is usually about six months. And this is me, sitting on my 1,134th successful kill." she paused, patting her pockets for a moment before drawing out a three inch long black object, which Felicity recognized as a grief seed. "Speaking of which..." she tossed it to her, and Felicity caught it, putting it up to the light and examining it. There was a brief pause as Felicity probed it, then she looked up at Kara.

"Class B, some kind of party based apparition. Spawned two familiars before it died, both within the last week. From what I can tell, this one hadn't claimed any kills before you got to it. Should be good for... three recharges for most, if they were lucky, so twenty-seven recharges for you." Felicity said. Janet looked at her with shock, shaking her head.

"Kara, your little sister scares me sometimes." she said teasingly. "Give it another few years and she'll be a regular Sherlock Holmes."

"It's really not that hard once you get the patterns down." Felicity said, feeling a little pride enter her voice. "And I've had plenty of practice."

"You can keep it for your collection." Kara said. "I know you like them, for whatever reason."

"Yes!" Felicity said, putting it in her pocket. "That will make eight hundred and forty-seven." she grinned.

"You know, you should really take Felicity on one of your witch hunts." Janet said. "It'll be good for her."

"I have." Kara said defensively. "Twice."

"They were both familiars." Felicity said. "And one of those was on accident because I happened to find an attack on my own."

"She's a year older than we were when we started." Janet said. "And you know full well the best way to convince someone not to become a magical girl is to show them how deadly it is." she grinned. "Just look at how I turned out. If I hadn't watched you nearly die half a dozen times, I would have signed up too."

"I'm glad you didn't." Kara said. "Now, even after I've gone, someone will be able to remember them for me, even when the rest of the world has forgotten them."

"Oh, come on." Janet said. "You're going to be a magical grandma someday, and never think otherwise."

"Back in my day, we didn't do witch hunting with any of those fancy newfangled devices you got." Kara said in a scratchy voice, and she and Janet laughed again. Felicity managed to slip out from under Kara's arm. Those two would keep on talking for hours, using references that she didn't get and that they wouldn't explain. Sometimes, Felicity wished she was a magical girl too. Then Kara would have to take her seriously.

She went over to her book bag and pulled out her new laptop. It was an Abyssal RX2002, with 512 MB of ATC19 SDRAM and Megaloader Platinum 1500 graphics, powered by two 1ghz MZAlpha Imperion processors. It had cost $1,400, but she had managed to get a hold of one only two weeks after launch. It helped that she asked for literally nothing else from anyone. Computers weren't toys, and she always treated her machines with respect.

She quickly booted up one of her programming projects, looking for various flaws in the code. She lost herself in the lines, so deep in thought that she almost didn't notice the sudden drop off in sound.

Felicity lifted her head slowly. The two older girls were looking out at a strange, cat like creature who had entered the building. Its red eyes turned to Felicity, and she felt her cheeks warm.

"It's one of those Incubator things, isn't it." Felicity said slowly. This was the first time she'd actually seen one, but she remembered the descriptions well. It was hard to mistake it. The blood red eyes, white and pink coat, golden ringlets around the ears.

"Hello, Kara, Janet, Felicity." it said, giving Felicity a cute look.

"What do you want?" Kara growled. "Are you here to ask Janet to contract again?"

"Oh, no." the Incubator cocked its head at them. "After the events which occurred three years two hundred ninety-seven days ago, we recognized the chances of forming a contract with Janet successfully were less than one in eighty-four trillion, so we ceased attempts. Besides, she has now exited the second growth stage, and is no longer of any use." the Incubator turned back to Felicity. "I have a message for Felicity."

"You stay away from my sister." Kara said, transforming in a flourish of white petals. "Or I'll kill you a million times over. I have more than enough power in reserve, you know."

"We are well aware, Kara, of your power." The Incubator said. "It is still a surprise that a wish like yours managed to pass. It had been theorized as possible, but to simply wish for higher efficiency like you did was unprecedented. We have tried to reproduce the event in ninety-two other cases since, but with no success. It appears that your karmatic potential was significantly higher than average. Very few magical girls would be able to successfully achieve such a wish."

"What do you want with Felicity?" Janet asked. "Or do I even have to ask?"

"It is simply a message." the Incubator said. "Witch hunter; forty-four; three thousand seven hundred twenty-nine; eighteen; twelve; two million, three hundred ninety thousand, five hundred sixty-four." the Incubator turned to leave. "I will return in three days." it said, then walked out.

"What... was that?" Janet said, but Felicity had already turned back to her laptop, loading up her 'witch hunter' program. The UI prompted her to supply certain variables, and she inputted the Incubator's numbers into the missing slots. She set the computer to run fifty thousand trials, then turned to the others.

"Witch hunter is the name of a program I wrote." Felicity explained. "A population modeler which was supposed to be able to graph the future population of witches in the area based on some known factors like how fast they spawn familiars and how many were being killed every night. I haven't been able to get many numbers, though." she gave Kara a look. "You wouldn't answer when I asked you. But, if I plug the numbers the Incubator gave us, I'll be able to statistically predict the future population trends in the area."

"There's no way they'd just do something like that." Janet said. "Those things are manipulative bastards. If it gave you the numbers, it has a reason for it. It's probably just lying."

"Incubators don't lie." Kara said. "They just only give you the information most likely to get you to do what they want."

Felicity's computer began to whir, and the screen flashed black. A graph appeared, titled 'trial 00001'. The populations of humans, magical girls, and witches were shown up on the screen with blue, green, and red lines, respectively. Felicity watched the graph with apprehension as the red line climbed upwards exponentially, until the blue and green lines both plummeted suddenly to zero and the screen cleared. A different chart, titled 'trial 00002', flashed up. It progressed faster, but with the same result. Cart after chart flashed up on screen, each one progressing faster than the previous.

"No..." Felicity said. "That can't be."

"What's wrong?" Kara said. "What do those charts mean?"

Felicity didn't say anything as chart after chart rapidly flashed up on the screen. The program buzzed through nearly one thousand a second at the end, then went completely dark. There was a ten second pause, and then the computer displayed the following text.

_Population Models finished. Listing Results:_

_The results have been categorized based on total expected destruction to human populations, with an A type event predicting little to no change in total human populations, and an E type event predicting complete destruction of the city and all its inhabitants._

_In fifty thousand trials, there were 1 A type event, 7 B type events, 24 C type events, 73 D type events, and 49895 E type events. The models suggest a 10% chance of total destruction of the city by June 08 of 2002, a 50% chance of total destruction of the city by August 29 of 2002, and a 90% chance of total destruction of the city by February 13 of 2003. There is an estimated 0.1% +/- 0.02% chance of human survival in this area for the next five years._

"What the hell?" Janet said. "What does that mean?"

"It means," Felicity said slowly, "my program has predicted a greater then even chance that the city will be destroyed before I enter ninth grade."

"Wait, how can you possibly know that?" Kara said. "Tomorrow I could get hit by a bus and knock the magic girl population down by one. Or an Incubator could get lucky and make fifteen new ones next week. There's no way you could predict something like that."

"It's statistics." Felicity said. "That's why I ran fifty thousand trials. Each trial takes my data inputs, like human, witch, and magical girl populations, and throws in some random factors to simulate those random occurrences that happen in real life. It only works because we're running so many different trials on a group of people which numbers in the millions. Or, apparently, two point three nine million, if the Incubator gave us the right number. In large groups, people tend to act in predictable ways. If the group is large enough, we can do math to figure out things about it. It can't give us exact answers, only probabilities, but a fifty percent chance of destruction by August 29 doesn't sound good to me."

"It must have lied, then." Janet said. "I never trusted those things. The Incubator is just trying to do what it always does, get people to contract. It wants to freak you out so that you'll sign up."

"Give me your numbers, then." Felicity said. "How long does a magical girl usually live? How many are contracted per day? What's the population of witches right now? How many are being killed every night?"

"I don't know." Kara said. "I think there are a few other magical girls in the city with me, but not very many."

"Just think about it logically." Felicity said. "Witches make familiars, which make more witches, which make more familiars at an ever increasing rate. They're a K-type reproductive species, and they grow exponentially. But magical girl populations are determined by both human populations and the number of Incubators around. They can only grow linearly. If the magical girl population is sufficiently high, and the witch population is sufficiently low, it isn't a problem. But once a particular threshold is crossed, the linear model won't be able to suppress the growth of the exponential model fast enough. It'll jump upwards essentially unhindered until it uses all of the resources in its area. In this case, that resource is the human population."

"What do we do, then?" Janet said. "Are you going to contract and join the fight? Because that's just what those insidious things want, you know."

"It wouldn't matter." Felicity said. "One additional magical girl isn't going to be enough." she tapped a few keys on the computer, running another simulation. She coded furiously for a few moments, then let to computer run. After about fifteen seconds, it spat out some text. Felicity looked up. "From just a quick model, so not a very accurate one, it looks like we need about three hundred and ten of them. By the end of next week."

"Three hundred ten?" Janet said, aghast. "That's... ridiculous."

"If we could get two hundred and fifteen by tomorrow night, that would work too." Felicity said. "Next Friday, eleven days from now, and it's three-ten. I picked that date because it's the last day for which the total number per day we need to get is going down. We'll need almost eighteen hundred to stop it in thirty days, and we'd need the total population of the city to do it in two months."

"This can't be right." Kara said. "Just think about it. If it takes 310 magical girls to keep a city of 2.39 million safe, people would notice."

"330. The incubator told me there were already 18." Felicity said.

"Even worse. In a city of 2.39 million... let's say 2.4 million, to make it easier. Half male, half female means that there are 1.2 million girls. The second life stage in which we can contract seems to be ages eleven to eighteen, so a little less than a tenth of the human lifespan. That means the total number of eligible people for contracts is, what, about 100,000? And we need 330. A third of a percent of all girls worldwide can't be magical girls at any given time. That's just way too high, especially when you consider turnover rates. If half of magical girls die every six months, to keep the population at a constant 0.33%, you'd need to end up contracting 7 times that number total as they passed through that age group. That would mean that almost 2.5% of all girls would have been, at some point, magical girls. That's just impossible. The world would notice. They might not know why, but over 1% of the world population can't disappear during childhood without someone noticing."

"Most cities don't need nearly this many." Felicity said. "We're not at the base of the curve, Kara. We're already on the quickly raising part. That threshold I mentioned was passed a while back. Running the numbers backwards, if we'd know about this one year ago, we would have only needed about sixty total, only another forty. Three years ago, and we'd have only needed to have about thirty-five active magical girls. From what I can tell, under normal conditions, if about 0.0015% of the total population in an area are magical girls, or 0.035% of your 'eligible population', they should be able to maintain stability. But we've been below that for years now, and it's catching up with us."

"There have been more witches recently." Kara said slowly. "A lot more. I thought something might be happening, but I never imagined it would be on this scale."

"You would be starting to notice it about now." Felicity said. "Their numbers just hit the point where they're basically in free climb about two months ago, during which time their total numbers should have increased roughly seven fold."

"You two have both been taken in!" Janet said. "The damn cat is a lying bastard. It's manipulating you to do what it wants. It's even manged to go a step farther than most, getting you to do the fucking recruitment for it!"

"It's true, we are definitely working into its hands." Felicity said. "And the fact that it knew what my program was called is troubling. But, whether or not it has outside motives, if the information is correct, we are all going to die if we don't act quickly. The city is about to be destroyed, and we are the only ones who can stop it."

"We can't afford to double guess this." Kara said. "Not something like this. Janet, you've always trusted my judgment before. These numbers explain what I've noticed and tried not to think about recently."

"So, what, you're going to reverse the years of work that we've put in trying to get girls aware of Incubators and manage to convert them in unheard of numbers over the course of the next two weeks?" Janet said, shaking her head.

"Eleven days. I said the end of next week." Felicity said.

"Kara, this is stupid." Janet said. "We can't trust an Incubator."

"I don't trust Incubators." Kara said. "But I do trust Felicity's math. There's nothing more certain in this world than Felicity's answer to a mathematics problem. If she says we need three hundred and ten more magical girls by the end of next week or the city will be destroyed, then that's exactly what we need."

"Won't this just make things worse in the long run?" Janet asked. "I mean, you know what happens to magical girls who run out of magic. If we do make another three hundred of them, and then we kill all the witches in the area, won't we just end up with another three hundred witches after a couple of weeks?"

"Yes, which will be less than one tenth of our current number." Felicity said. "I don't think you get the magnitude of this problem. There are almost four thousand witches in this city already. There are projected to be ten thousand by June 1. We'll break 100,000 in late august, and hit about 350,000 in mid September. At which point their numbers will stop going up, because they will have killed everyone." Felicity looked at Janet coolly. "Tonight, Kara has killed one witch. If all of the seventeen other magical girls have also killed one witch tonight, a total of eighteen will have been killed. At this point, an average of 237 familiars are being produced every day. They take about two weeks to mature fully, so we'll only see the familiars of a fortnight ago appearing now; at that time, it would have been about 149 per day. Tonight alone, under optimal conditions, the population of witches has increased by roughly one hundred and thirty. We are in the middle of a rapidly increasing population explosion that has just now started to go off. If we do not stop it immediately, we will be wholly unable to stem the tide."

"This can't possibly be!" Janet said. "If the populations were really that hard to balance, then cities would be wiped off the map every few years!"

"Or, every few years, an Incubator could careful place the information in the hands of people able to act upon it." Felicity said. "They warn them just in time, cash in on the huge number of grief seeds produced in the short time of intense panic, and let the populations stabilize again temporarily." she shook her head. "It's horrible, but it makes mathematical sense."

"There's no good answer, is there?" Janet said.

"No. There isn't." Kara said. "But we swore to protect this city no matter what, Janet. And if that means we have to play the Incubator's game, then that's what we'll do."

"If only we had all the information." Felicity said. "There is always the chance that I set up my model wrong. Just because something looks right in the short term doesn't mean anything for the long term. And, well, if I'm wrong, and we're not about to hit an apocalypse... we'll have convinced three hundred and ten innocent girls to die for nothing."

Felicity paused. Something was beginning to tickle at the back of her mind, a solution to at least some of their problems beginning to form. It flitted in and out of her mind, and she tried to grasp it with little success. Wishes, Incubators, and information...

"Why don't we ask for help from other cities?" Janet asked suddenly. "It shouldn't matter where the three hundred and ten come from, right?"

"No, that wouldn't work." Felicity said. "We need a total of three hundred and thirty magical girls for at least a month. It will take that long at minimum to beat their populations back far enough. Beyond the problem of hosting over three hundred people for a month, it would leave their cities without protection for that time. Moving that many magical girls around would drop at least a few of those cities below their threshold, and pretty soon every population center in the country would be at risk of collapse. There's also the issue of contacting them, convincing them to join us, and the potential that they'll just leave part way through or fight the other girls. When it's not your home at risk, you're much less likely to work in concert."

"This operation is just getting more and more impossible." Janet said. "What happens if some of the girls die before the month is up?"

"We'll have to replace them." Felicity said. Janet gasped, looking disgusted.

"These are people we're talking about." Janet said. "You're starting to sound like an Incubator yourself, Felicity."

"I know they're people!" Felicity said, her veneer of calmness cracking slightly. "But if we don't do this, even more will die. Can't you see that?" she shook a little bit. "Do you think I'm happy that I have to try to convince over three hundred people my age to go and fight and die? Do you think this makes me feel all good, like I'm finally achieving something? How twisted do you think I am?!" she yelled, and Janet took a step back from her. Felicity took a deep breath, calming herself slowly. After a moment of silence, she spoke again "If we don't do this, they're still going to die, and so will hundreds of thousands of others." she said quietly.

No one said anything for a moment. The three girls looked around at each other. Felicity had at some point gotten up onto the little side table, rising to the height of the other girls.

"So, are we doing this?" Janet said finally after a moment.

"What choice do we have?" Kara said.

Janet sighed. "I'll go and visit some of my friends. We should be able to start generating a list of names tomorrow." she shook her head. "I never thought we would be using our targeting tactics to help the Incubators."

"I'll see if any of the other girls are willing to talk." Kara said. "They usually don't like me, but if I phrase it right, and provide the right incentive..." she looked at Felicity. "I'm going to need some of those grief seeds back."

"There are over one hundred in a little box under my bed. You can start with those." Felicity said. "While you two do that, I'm going to track down Incubators. If anyone needed a wish more than me, I can't think of them. I'll figure out some way to trap them if I can. We're going to need a bunch to do this."

"We could wait three days." Janet said. "That one who came today said he'd be back."

"I'm not sure one Incubator is going to be enough for three hundred and ten girls." Felicity said. "It can't hurt to get more." she yawned suddenly.

"You sound tired." Janet said. "Perhaps you should go to bed. It's definitely past your bedtime."

"By this time tomorrow, I'll be a magical girl." Felicity said. "Then I won't have a bed time."

Kara sighed. "I tried so hard to keep you out of this, I really did. I thought if I could stop the Incubators from being able to easily contract people here, they'd eventually leave. I couldn't ever get in soon enough for everyone, but I was making progress. Janet was a huge help. We identified likely targets and showed them just how stupid of a choice it was." she looked down. "That's what did this, though. I was too successful. I pushed the magical girl number below the critical value. If I hadn't tried to stop magical girls from being created, we would have needed less magical girls in the long run." she laughed quietly. "Ironic, isn't it? The best move would have been to do nothing but what the damn Incubators wanted from the beginning. Funny how that works out."

"You didn't know." Felicity said. She yawned again. "It's not your fault for trying to make the world a better place in the wrong way." she grabbed a pillow from the couch and laid it down in the corner of the room. "I'm taking a sick day tomorrow." Felicity announced. "I can afford to fake one or two." she frowned. "Actually, I'll skip as many days of school as I damn well need to. This has to take top priority. It's the most important... most important... thing." she murmured, her eyes starting to close. It was strange, how quickly this sleep had set on her.

"Sleep well." Kara said.

Felicity tried to respond, but all that came out was a light murmur, then soft breathing as she fell into what was very likely to be her last good night of sleep.

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

"Now, if I was a alien cat-thing from a type III civilization who was looking for little girls to prey on, where would I go?" Felicity murmured to herself, sipping a milkshake and looking out the large glass windows of the ice-cream shop she was currently in and into the city beyond. The middle-school seemed like the obvious choice, but she couldn't show up there without being recognized instantly. It was a Tuesday, so there weren't any events going on that she knew of. Girls playing hookie like her would be scattered randomly around the city, so there was no way to predict that. Her eyes passed over the street beyond, until she landed on a comic store. Felicity smiled. Perfect. Anyone looking to become a superhero would inevitably end up in one of these places. Any Incubator worth their salt would show up here at least once in a while. It wasn't a guarantee, but it was a start.

She left the ice-cream shop and walked purposefully into the comic store. She walked around, pretending to be interested in certain objects as to not arouse suspicion. No one payed her any mind. After a few minutes had passed, Felicity lost patience and left the store. Not even a hint of an Incubator anywhere. She looked around the streets, trying to figure out where to go next, when she spotted one in the corner of her eye. She turned and watched it disappear into an ally nearby. Felicity grinned. Luck was on her side.

She quickly ran after it, turning down the ally just in time to see it dart into another small passage. She sighed, continuing her chase. It managed to avoid her for nearly five minutes before she final caught up to it, scooping it up like a cat and turning it to face her.

"I've got..." Felicity started, then sighed. "You." her shoulders sagged, and she put down the white tabby, who ran away from her as soon as it was safely on the ground. Felicity sat down on the steps of a nearby building, sighing to herself. She was getting nowhere. What had she really expected, anyway? It wasn't like she had much of a chance catching a networked organism that was far smarter, faster, and smaller then she was. She would only find an Incubator if they wanted her to find them. If they wanted her...

"Hello, Felicity." a voice said from behind her, and she turned to face an Incubator, licking its paw cutely and deliberately. "You were looking for one of me?"

"Yes." Felicity said. "I want you to make me a magical girl. Do it now."

The Incubator blinked suddenly. "This is highly anomalous. From your relationship to Kara, we assumed it would be much more difficult then this to convince you." the Incubator paused. "Not that I'm complaining. Tell me, what is your wish?"

Felicity breathed in and out slowly, then gave the Incubator a steady look. "I want your powers. All of them. I wish for all the powers of the Incubators."

"Your wish has been granted." the Incubator said, but he looked very unhappy about it. No, he _was_ very unhappy about it. Felicity felt her chest convulse, and a searing pain ripped itself out of her body and coalesced in front of her. She had been prepared for that. But then her head throbbed, and her skin began to burn on the back of her right hand. Suddenly, it was like the floodgates of her mind had been opened, whereas before she could see only a trickle. Data rushed in at her as she became connected to the Incubator network, became a part of it. She felt herself changing, loosing a part of her identity to the mass that was the whole of the Incubator species. She shed her memories and feelings in layers, tearing her to the core and threatening to overwrite her existence. Furiously, she pulled as much of Felicity that remained back together, and slammed the floodgates closed with a force of will great enough to move mountains. Her mind reeled, her body shook, and then, finally, it was over. She collapsed to the ground, her soul gem in her left hand, and her grief seed acceptance hatch in her right.

She panted heavily for a moment, then stopped. Panting was a horribly inefficient way of getting oxygen back into her blood stream. Given her body mass and lung capacity, modulating her breathing to one full draw every 1.937 seconds would allow for maximum uptake and quickest recovery time. She let her breath slide into this higher efficiency track and stood up, brushing the dirt off of her shirt and pants.

"You should be brain dead." the Incubator said. Felicity checked his data and provided the necessary corrections to the equations. The Incubator cocked his head. "Your intelligence being 2.49% above expected and the introduction of 18.968 ml of adrenaline to your system at key points fails to provide sufficient explanation for your survival." Felicity spent 6.38 seconds contemplating how to explain 'pure force of will' to the Incubator, then decided it was simply not worth her effort. She walked away from the Incubator slowly, its attempts at determining her nature failing rapidly as confusion and uncertainty spread throughout the Incubator network. As she did, her brain underwent its final, late stage changes, separating her fully and totally from the realm of humanity.

The human-incubator interface formerly known as Felicity let herself expend the unnecessary energy to smile.

**Authors Note:**

Kara's wish was that every grief seed she got would give her ten times the normal number of recharges. It won't ever be mentioned directly in the story because all of the characters know it already, but I thought you aught to know.


	2. Part II: Minimum Viable Population

Part II: Minimum Viable Population

"So, any luck?" Janet asked Felicity as she entered the small building. Felicity turned to Janet, examining her carefully before answering.

"Felicity has procured a method of generating functionally unlimited numbers of magical girls." Felicity said. "Her method allows conversion of, in addition to females in the second growth stage, females in the third growth stage, and males in the second growth stage. However, these axillary conversion groups would be far less effective than the primary conversion group. The functional output of a male in the second growth stage would be 0.387 of the primary conversion group, and the functional output of a female in the third growth stage would be 0.491. In the interest of preserving as much human life as possible, Felicity suggests that we maintain the current trend of only targeting individuals categorized as 'female, second growth stage'."

"Come again?" Janet said, but Felicity had already passed into the room and picked up her computer, examining it carefully. With stunning precision, she made an incision with her magic, opening up the back and playing with the processor chips. Janet sighed.

"So, you're a magical girl too now." she said.

"This statement is not entirely accurate." Felicity said. "Felicity is most accurately a magically active human-incubator interface. However, in the service of simplicity, you may refer to her as a magical girl."

"Human-incubator what?" Janet said. "Felicity, what are you talking about? What happened? And why are you referring to yourself in third person?"

"Felicity decided that, in order to diminish the knowledge gap between our group and that of the Incubators, as well as in the interests of providing for magical girls the option of graduating to a K-type population growth model, she should take it upon herself to wish of the Incubators their abilities." Felicity said, her voice cheery, as if she was making small talk. After all, it wasn't like she intended on keeping the information secret. "She did not anticipate the level of psychological and physiological changes that taking on all of the Incubators powers would cause. Felicity experienced a 973.42% increase in data processing ability, 281.94% increase in logical capacity, 429.87% increase in reaction time, and 3,984.62% increase in scientific understanding. Felicity experienced a 87.984% reduction in emotional capacity, 41.875% reduction in memories, and 64.738% reduction in personal identity. Felicity has maintained 99.732% of her will, and possesses 98.481% of her previous subjective morality."

Janet looked at her, stunned. Felicity toyed with her computer for a moment longer, before putting it down and turning to address Janet directly. "If you wish to directly participate in the events which come, Felicity is capable of allowing your transformation into a magical girl. However, Felicity would wish to remind you that, as you are currently in the third growth stage, you are predicted to achieve only 49.1% of the ability that you would have had during the second growth stage."

"You... turned yourself into an Incubator." Janet said slowly.

"This statement is not entirely accurate." Felicity said. "Felicity is most accurately a magically active human-incubator interface. However, in the service of simplicity, you may refer to her as an Incubator." she tilted her head. "Though, also in the interest of simplicity, Felicity would request that you chose which one of the two designations, 'magical girl' or 'Incubator', you wish to refer to her as on a regular basis."

"Oh, Kara is going to flip." Janet said. "Do you have any idea what you've done?"

"Yes. Felicity has provided a way for magical girls to reproduce without the need of an external source." Felicity said. "She has fundamentally changed the structure of the Incubator/human relationship." she tilted her head to indicate her confusion. She couldn't grasp the point of Janet asking such a trivial, senseless question. Of course she knew what she had done.

"No, you idiot. You've given away the one thing that makes humans worth saving. You've given up your emotions." Janet said.

Felicity blinked. She felt... shocked? Maybe hurt? It was too weak of a feeling to tell for sure. "Felicity retains 12.016% of her emotional capabilities." Felicity said.

"So you're one eighth human still. That makes _everything_ better." Janet said, exasperated.

"Felicity is pleasantly surprised that you agree." Felicity said, and Janet sighed heavily. Felicity played around with the computer for a moment longer, then put the laptop back together. "Felicity does not have the necessary tools to improve this device." Felicity declared. She turned back to Janet. "Felicity requests the sum of 794.86 USD."

"What?" Janet said. "No, I'm not going to give you eight hundred dollars. You're going to sit there, and when Kara gets back we're going to figure out how to fix you."

"Felicity is not broken." Felicity explained earnestly. It was nice of Janet to be worried about her, but she would have thought by now it would have been clear that she was perfectly alright. Better than she had been before, even. "She is now operating at an average of 314.77% her previous baseline effectiveness. By any logical measure-"

"That's just it!" Janet said. "Felicity is more than a machine! She had feelings and hopes and dreams and acted in her own little weird ways!"

"Correction. Felicity used to express 'feelings', 'hopes', and 'dreams' in such a way that was easily visible to you." Felicity said. "Felicity still possesses these capabilities, she just acts on them more subtly." Felicity gave Janet a calm look. "For instance, Felicity currently requests 794.86 USD in order to improve her computer. Not because she needs the additional computing power, though Felicity does recognize that such a thing may be useful. No, Felicity wants to improve her computer because she likes having fast computers." she gave Janet a reassuring smile. "Felicity is capable of acting illogically if she gives herself the liberty."

"I don't even have eight hundred dollars to give you." Janet said. "And you're not doing a very good job of convincing me that you're okay."

Felicity sighed. If Janet wouldn't see things logically, she guessed she would have drive the fear from her mind by reintroducing the greater danger of their long term goal. "Felicity does not need you to consider her to be 'okay'. Felicity only requires your cooperation so that we may acquire the three hundred and twelve additional magical girls we need by midnight on Friday, the seventeenth of May 2002." Felicity said. "You are welcome to think whatever you wish of Felicity so long as it does not hinder us in providing for that quota. If we are unable to acquire and manage the full complement of three hundred and thirty-one magical girls by that date, our rate of efficiency begins to decline."

"It's three hundred and twelve now, is it, instead of three hundred ten?" Janet said.

"Felicity has improved her models through use of..." Felicity paused. "There is no word for the branch of mathematics in your language. It involves the treatment of random variables as discreet functions, and provides a method for summing infinite trials in a single equation. It is to statistics what calculus is to algebra, to put it in terms you might understand."

"Oh, great, you're doing maths we don't even have words for." Janet said. "You have to see that there's something wrong with that."

"If you have such trouble believing that Felicity is a fully logical human, you may instead consider her an insane Incubator. It is just as accurate." Felicity said. "She is afflicted with a particular insanity which drives her to protect the interests of the human species, despite their endemic inferiority to the Incubators. Or, rather, it is because of this 'insanity' that she is able to realize that this 'endemic inferiority', the ability to have emotions which cause one to act illogically, is in fact humanity's greatest asset, and one that makes them worth protecting."

Janet sat down, putting her head in her hands. "This is not how I expected this day to go." she said quietly, groaning.

Felicity suddenly felt a little pity rise inside of her. The transformation she had gone through must seem so strange to those stuck outside. Really, though, Janet was over reacting. It was typical of humans, to let their emotions control their actions so freely. In her mind, the psychological ticks of the older girl magnified suddenly, and she saw before her stretched out various paths of stimulus and reaction. Felicity laughed suddenly. So this was how Incubators saw human lives. It was a wonderfully simple game to play. Her human intuition kicked in, and thousands of dead end lines dropped out in seconds. Felicity laughed again. The Incubators had said that their chances of getting Janet to contract were one in eighty-four trillion. How funny! She could do it in three hundred words with eighty percent or higher chance of success, if she really wanted. The Incubators were lousy manipulators. She teasingly sent them the updated data.

"What's so funny?" Janet said.

"Nothing." Felicity said, drawing herself back into reality. "Sorry. She's still getting used to..." With considerable effort, Felicity paused, then continued. "_I'm_ still getting used to all the new information sh-... I have in my head. It might take me a few hours before I get back to baseline." Felicity shook her head. "I'm sorry for scaring you. It must be distressing seeing her... seeing me like this, but I can assure you that I have gained many benefits from the transformation." she sighed. "Like, for example, the ability to create magical girls on my own. Speaking of which, I would like to see the list of names you were trying to generate."

"Oh, yeah." Janet said. "Here." she handed Felicity the list. Felicity scanned it quickly, devoting the contents to memory. She handed the paper back to Janet.

"This appears to be a good start." Felicity said. "I will begin immediately."

"Hold up. You're not going anywhere until Kara gets back." Janet said.

"That is illogical." Felicity stated. "It makes much more sense for me to start immediately. I currently have everything I need to be able to begin conversion. From the data I have received from the Incubators, the chosen targets have an average contract chance of 11.7% upon first attempt. However, the Incubators know far less about human psychology than I do, and also express a level of functional intelligence 46.9% below mine." Felicity turned to Janet. "With the listing of 150 names, I should be able to provide between thirty-seven and forty-four magical girls, with an additional twelve to fourteen being pushed in such a way as to contract before the seventeenth. If I begin now, I should theoretically be able to contract an average of 3.74 magical girls per hour until nightfall."

"We were going to gather the girls together and have them all contract at once." Janet said. "At least, I thought that was the plan. Won't that be faster?"

"It will. However, as I have no ability to target candidates on my own, my slower but immediate start will only end up adding to our total." Felicity said. "It would be true that, if we only had a single operator, it would be faster to do what you described. However, with three operators, using both methods will result in higher totals in the end."

"How am I supposed to explain this to Kara?" Janet said.

"That is not my concern." Felicity said, but then relented. It wasn't Janet's fault that she couldn't see Felicity's viewpoint. She was hampered by her emotions and limited intelligence. Really, Felicity found it almost cute how much she obviously cared for Kara and herself, even if her relative lack of intelligence prohibited her from seeing the actions that would truly result in the highest gain for them. She gave Janet a smile. "Sorry. That was rude. I will explain it to her. Please, do not worry. Just don't say anything and act surprised when I come in next time. I predict a 94.92% chance that Kara will be too concerned with my transformation herself to notice any lack of true investigative questioning on your part."

Janet sat down. "I'm not happy about this, Felicity. I'm really not."

"I know." Felicity said. "But it is of much greater concern to me that you survive than that you be happy with me. Besides, as I said, I'm beginning to return to normality. It won't be quite the same, sure, but within the next few hours I should begin to act considerably more human." She took Janet's hand. "Besides, it's not like the process is reversible. Even via a wish, you'd need a karmatic potential of over 67.8 to pull it off successfully. Only one in every eighty-six thousand five hundred magical girls reach that level. This is what Felicity is now."

Janet paused. "How powerful of a magical girl are you, anyway?"

"I possess a karmatic potential of 94.5." Felicity said. "I am the most powerful magical girl currently alive, and am likely to remain as such for... thirty-seven years, statistically."

"Well, that's something at least." Janet said.

"However, I have no skill using my powers. As such, I could easily be defeated by most moderately skilled magical girls, or witches class A or B." Felicity continued. "Once night falls, I will progress to personal training."

"When are you going to sleep?" Janet said.

"Felicity no longer requires sleep." Felecity said.

"Oh." Janet sighed. "Of course not. Why would you need to sleep?"

"If you don't have further questions for her, Felicity would like to begin." Felicity said.

"You've switched back to third person." Janet informed her.

"Sorry." Felicity said. "I'm trying."

"I can't believe you did this." Janet said. She sighed, then smiled at Felicity. "But the way you keep pulling back to humanity, organically... You're still Felicity, down in the middle. You've got other stuff tagged on, but I can tell." Janet shook her head. "I was so scared that you were gone."

"I have lost much." Felicity ventured. "including forty-one percent of my memory, as previously mentioned. You were not wrong to be worried. But I am still me, if changed. And I will do what I set out to do, which is protect this city. Now that I'm over three times more intelligent and have access to over one million times the data, I'll be even better at it." she gave Janet a steady look. "Still, the problem we currently face is not one which can be solved through intellectual means. It is one of the few problems where violence is truly the only answer. We still will require three hundred and twelve more magical girls. Which I will begin acquiring immediately, if you have no more objections."

Janet didn't seem happy about it, but she sighed and nodded her head. "Yeah. You go do that. We need to get started, you're right. Besides, we don't even have a place to gather the three hundred at once anyway."

"I am certain you and Kara can come up with something." Felicity said. "I can think of eighty-seven suitable locations, twenty-three of which would cost less than 50.00 USD for the service." Felicity's mind suddenly leaped through multiple varied logic connections, her subconscious alerting her to a greater movement. She turned to Janet suddenly. "The plan has changed. I request 37.23 USD."

"Uh, okay." Janet said. "I can actually give you that." she rummaged around in her pockets and handed Felicity two twenty dollar bills. "What do you need this for?"

"I will have 85,500 plus or minus 675 USD by sunset." Felicity said. "We will require the funding."

"Come again?" Janet said, but Felicity had already left the building.

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

Felicity was sitting down at a desk inside of her internet cafe, watching stock prices fluctuate. She was writing furiously in a notebook, checking and double checking her mathematics. She had arrived here an hour and a half ago after putting 25 USD into an account that was accessible by the internet. Ten dollars had bought her two hours worth of computer use, and the remaining two dollars and 23 cents had purchased a donuts and two soft drinks. Currently, one hour and thirty-three minutes into her operation, she had approximately 1973 USD at hand. It was only approximate, as the stock prices continued to vary ever so slightly. The calculations on her paper would have looked incomprehensible to even the most hardened economists. This was unsurprising, as she was using models which wouldn't be invented for one hundred years or more. Still, even armed with her fantastic intelligence and unheard of techniques, Felicity had to admit that economics were very, very difficult.

"Hey, whatcha doing?" A voice said from behind her. Felicity didn't turn around. "You playing a game?" the voice was teasing, female, about her age. "I always thought nerds like you would stay in school."

"I have other matters to attend." Felicity said. She opened a window of her program and quickly wrote a few lines of code.

"Oh, a coder." the other girl said. "Nice."

"Not as skilled as you are, though." Felicity said. She turned around, facing the girl. She had long black hair, black clothes on with silver buttons. Not quite full goth, but pretty close. Felicity put her hands together. "I've been expecting you."

The other girl looked surprised. "What? I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't know you."

"I apologize, Jenifer." Felicity said. She paused momentarily. "Or would you rather I call you Kazzer?"

Jenifer's eyes narrowed. "How do you-"

"Know your name and 'hacker' codename? I know a fair bit about you." Felicity said. "I can read certain information from other people's minds. It's less useful then it sounds. I can only get very basic things, like name, age, basic emotional state. Only things you identify with your sense of self. I couldn't tell you the name of your favorite author, for instance. And, no, I am not capable of planting thoughts into your mind, or changing your emotions."

"You expected me?" Jenifer said, sitting down next to Felicity.

"Not you in particular. But there was a eighty-four point seven percent chance that someone of your type would show up within the first two hours of operations." Felicity said.

"My type?" she said. "I'm not sure I like the connotations on that."

"Young female rebel hacker of moderate to high skill level, large but hidden social drive and highly observant." Felicity said. "Before you showed up, I knew I had a sixty-one point eight percent chance of making a conversion. But your current reactions make me believe that that number is more accurately in the ninety-five percent or higher region. I don't have the liberty right now for an exact calculation."

"Conversion?" Jenifer said. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Please, follow me." Felicity said, standing up. "I have a demonstration for you."

Jenifer seemed resistant, but then Felicity sighed. "Please, I need your help. This is very important, Jenifer. I'm not going to lie to you and say that you're the only one, but you are part of a very small pool, less than 1% of the population, who is useful to me." Felicity gave her a sad look. "Just follow me for a few minutes."

Jenifer still didn't seem happy about it, but then she sighed. "Well, I didn't think I was going to run into a psychic girl today, but I can't say I had something more interesting planned."

Felicity led Jenifer out of the internet cafe, taking her to a nearby alleyway. When they had progressed half way down the alley, Felicity turned to face Jenifer. She snapped her fingers and transformed herself without flourish into her magical girl form, then settled down. Her outfit was pure white, with the incubator's red egg emblazoned onto the front. Jenifer took a step back from her.

"What are you?" she asked.

"I am what is referred to colloquially as a magical girl." Felicity informed her. "Though, you're not one to believe in magic, are you?" she tilted her head. "By forming a contract with the advanced alien civilization know as the Incubators, female humans in their second growth stage are capable of unlocking 'magical' powers. They receive, in addition to these powers, one wish. As a trade off, these girls must fight witches, evil 'magical' creatures who threaten human life." Felicity paused, letting Jenifer digest the information. She continued after a moment. "Currently, there are nineteen active magical girls in the greater metropolitan area of this city. There are additionally over three thousand eight hundred and fifty witches. For the past three years, the witch population has been increasing at a rate that far exceeds the rate that our current magical girl population can control. If we do not do something about this, the city will be destroyed within the next six months. The longer we wait, the harder it will be to act. We require three hundred and thirty-one magical girls total to succeed in reversing the population trends. However..." Felicity paused again. "The Incubators are an insidious parasite species which exists to farm humanity for emotional energy using the magical girls. Until three hours, twelve minutes ago, there were no other options for humanity than to sign up with the Incubators." Felicity smiled. "Then, I wished to be able to produce magical girls personally. I am capable of preforming the necessary steps to produce conversions. Technically, I do not require consent, but I refuse to make conversions without it."

"Well, that's, uh, awfully nice of you." Jenifer said. She shook her head. "So, what you are telling me is that you want me to... become a superhero and fight the forces of evil?"

"In essence, yes." Felicity said. "I will not lie to you, magical girls do not typically live very long. However, there are benefits-"

"Awesome!" Jenifer said. "Can we do it immediately?"

Felicity blinked. "Are you sure? There are other risks-"

"I don't care." Jenifer said. "I get magical powers! What could be cooler than that!"

"If you insist." Felicity said. "I can preform conversion as soon as you make your wish."

"Oh! Uh..." Jenifer looked up, trying to think. Felicity sighed internally. People like this did exist, and they would be the easiest to convert, but she still wasn't sure she was okay with how quickly Jenifer was throwing away her life. "Do you have any suggestions?" she asked after a moment.

"You are trading your life for it. Make sure it counts." Felicity suggested.

"Gee, thanks." Jenifer tapped her foot. "I have it! I want a HUD!"

"A heads up display?" Felicity said slowly. "That is what you are willing to trade your life for?"

"No, I'm trading my life for the magical powers. The HUD's just cool." Jenifer. "What could be better than being a superhero anyway?"

"I just want to confirm with you that you know that this is an extremely dangerous line of work. You will most likely be dead within one year." Felicity said. "And it's hard work, and we are in the middle of a crisis, and you're going to suffer quite a bit-"

"You chose to do it, didn't you?" Jenifer said. "Or did one of those evil alien do the 'without consent' thing?"

"I chose to do it." Felicity said. "But I knew what I was getting into, whereas you clearly do not."

"Don't you have to get three-hundred thirty-one of us?" Jenifer said. "If I'm being stupid and joining before I know what I'm doing, doesn't that help you?"

"Three hundred and twelve, and you're not helpful if you die in forty-eight hours." Felicity said.

"I won't." Jenifer said. "Do it already."

"Fine." Felicity said, stepping towards Jenifer. "This is going to hurt a lot. Please stay calm." she outstretched her hand, and Jenifer buckled over as energy coursed through her body. Felicity kept it in check, collating it into one area to lock the energy down in a useable form. It took her longer than it really should have, and Jenifer bucked and writhed for a good three minutes before Felicity managed to finish the process.

"That was hell." Jenifer said when she had finally recovered enough to speak.

"You were my first." Felicity said. "I should be much better next time."

"Well, great for whoever is next, then." Jenifer said. "How does this magic stuff work?"

"Now you ask." Felicity said flatly. "Luckily, it's all very intuitive. You'll just know what to do."

"Okay..." Jenifer flashed into a black dress, glowing purple energy swords on her back. "Oh, man, that's cool." she said, drawing one of the blades.

"You should be careful about spending your magic." Felicity said. "You have a very limited supply, usually enough to kill two or three witches before recharging. Each witch you kill will drop a 'grief seed', which will be able to restore roughly one full charge worth of energy, or about two to three times what it takes to kill them. In the event you run out of magic entirely, you die horribly, painfully, and become the very monsters you were fighting."

"Wait, what?" Jenifer said, turning on Felicity. "I die if I run out of magic, and I have enough for two fights!?" she glared. "That is not cool. Why didn't you mention that before!"

"I was trying too, but you kept cutting me off." Felicity said. "The process is non-reversible. I'm sorry. I really did try, but you didn't want to listen."

Jenifer sighed. "Well, I guess I'll just have to be good at it, eh?" she blinked suddenly. "Oh, and there's the HUD. Cool, it automatically switched to relevant items." she cast her eyes around. "No HP, only MP. I wonder why..."

"Your body is no longer human." Felicity said. "You are a magical construct. You can withstand any amount of physical trauma so long as you have the magic to repair yourself and your soul gem stays intact."

"Oh, that's this thing, huh?" Jenifer looked at the pitch black gemstone in her hand. "It's cool."

"Usually they darken when you're running low on power as an indicator." Felicity removed hers to show Jenifer, then paused, shocked. The gem was so corrupt that Felicity was surprised she hadn't already collapsed. Apparently, making new magical girls was a very energy consuming process. She could barely manage one. Jenifer looked at it.

"That looks horrible." Jenifer said.

"If it gets this far, usually you die." Felicity said. "I had no idea that the conversion would cost this much. I was at full before."

"93% corrupt, according to the HUD." Jenifer said. She paused. "It's got a mini map too, and event indicators. This is actually going to be useful."

"Congratulations." Felicity said. "Here is the address of our meeting place. Please be there on the seventeenth. You can do whatever you please until then."

"Okay." Jenifer said. "This is... cool." she seemed to still be not quite fully grasping the situation, but, really, that wasn't Felicity's concern. She had done what she needed to do. Slowly, she began to smile. The plan was beginning to unfold as expected.

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

She managed four more conversions. They all progressed more or less similarly to the first, though each successive one was faster, cleaner, and less magically costly. Luckily for Felicity, she had access to more than enough soul gems to offset her losses. Two of them she managed to get on board with the saving the city narrative, one wanted the powers, much like Jenifer, and the final one needed the wish. Seven had said no, and she had let them go after planting the right seeds of thought into their minds. They would send others her way now.

The list of names Janet had given her had proved useless, as Felicity knew it would. Janet knew how to target people who would be most likely to be taken in by the wish, which was not the group Felicity was looking for. Unlike the incubators, her targets being stable, or having something beyond themselves to fight for, things which made transformation into witches far less likely, were not causes for concern. She cared not to harvest their energy, and thus it mattered not what their emotional potential was. She just wanted them to convert. She needed to find people who wanted to be the hero, willing to work in a group to save the day. Still, building the lists gave Kara and Janet something to do while Felicity set up the real plan.

She had sold off her stock at exactly 7:30 PM, as the sun set. 89,348.76 USD. Her estimate had been slightly off, but Felicity wasn't too concerned. Add the $2.77 that was left from the $40.00 given to her, and she had $89,351.53 available. It was enough for her plan, and that was what mattered. She purchased a room in a hotel for one month for $3,500. She spent $8.59 on two reams of paper, $3.76 on a pack of pens, and $43.98 to treat herself to a nice diner. After delivering her items to her room, she went back to the meetinghouse to pick up her computer.

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

"Oh, hi, Kara." Felicity said as she entered. Kara looked up from a map she was examining and turned to Felicity, as did Janet.

"Felicity!" Kara said, placing her hands on Felicity's shoulders and looking down into her eyes. "Where were you? It's nearly eleven, and Mom was worried sick!"

"I'm sorry." Felicity said. "I had some things to take care of. I left a note when I went home to stock up on grief seeds."

"The note said that you 'were out'. That doesn't..." Kara paused. "Wait. Why did you need..." her eyes went wide. "You didn't... already?"

"I formed a contract, yes." Felicity said. "I have been a magical girl for ten hours and forty-three minutes." she turned to Janet. "As you can see, I have mostly normalized by now. Not quite, but I'm getting there."

"Normalized?" Kara looked concerned. Felicity raised her right hand, showing Kara the Incubator's hatch etched into it. She seemed confused.

"I wished for the powers of the Incubators." Felicity explained. "I meant that I wanted to be able to make magical girls myself. What I got was _all_ of their powers. Including their, shall we say, logical processing?" she gave Kara a reassuring smile. "I've lost most of my emotional capabilities, but not all of them, and my morals are still intact."

"You lost your what?" Kara said. "Felicity, what are you saying?"

"I am part Incubator. I have patched into their network, and I have been changed by their influence." Felicity said. "But I am also part Felicity. I have her morals, and attitude, and about 60% of her memories."

Kara put a hand up to her mouth. "Felicity..."

"You know very well that the transformation into a magical girl is non-reversible." Felicity said. "Though my actions were, in retrospect, rash, we have no option but to continue forward under this new set of circumstances. And I'm not dead, Kara. Just... different."

Kara shuttered, then put her hand down, sighing. "I knew something like this was going to happen." she said. "I've been preparing for this for a few years now. It's not quite what I thought it was going to be, but..." she gave Felicity a long, sad look. "I understand that we can't let our personal feeling get in the way of this. Oh, but Felicity... to lose your humanity as well as to give up your life..."

Felicity reached out to take Kara's hand. Kara flinched slightly, but let her after a moment. Felicity looked up into Kara's eyes.

"I need a hug." Felicity said. "Please."

Kara's face melted, and she drew Felicity into a hug, holding her close. "We'll get through this, Felicity, and once we've won, we'll figure out how to get you back together."

"Okay." Felicity said. "I... would like that, Kara. I..." her voice cracked slightly.

"It's okay." Kara said, squeezing Felicity tighter.

Felicity tried to smile. She had now convinced Kara that she was still Felicity. The reactions had gone exactly as predicted. Now that both Janet and Kara were certain that she was working with them, she could count on their support for her plan. Everything was falling into place.

She tried to smile, but her sadness wouldn't let her.

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

Felicity gave Janet $400 in return for her investment, then headed off to the hotel after telling Kara where she was staying. She shouldn't have told Kara, she knew. It made the plan more risky. But she couldn't stop herself. Luckily, once she had removed herself from Kara's presence, her emotions retreated and she was once again able to approach the issues at hand logically and clearly.

The hotel she had chosen had very poor accommodation, except in one respect. It provided an internet connection. A few minutes and a little bit of coding later, and Felicity had a working website running. From there, she quickly accessed the forums used by the 'punk' and 'hacker' subcultures, or more accurately the people who thought they were part of those subcultures but were really just pissed off teenagers, and located Kazzer online. As expected, she had already formed a small group of interested people by talking about her new powers. She'd even taken pictures. By midnight, Felicity had seven more hopefuls just waiting to get their magical powers. She directed them to her website, told them she'd meet them the next day, then left to purchase a cell phone.

There had been some questions, but even at half past midnight, it wasn't hard for Felicity to find a store willing to sell her a cellphone. $500 in cash convinced them that she wasn't an irresponsible teen, and she put her new contact information on her web page by 1:00.

She received her first call by 1:08. Word was spreading, and some people couldn't wait for a wish. No, they weren't going to die soon. Yes, they knew it was 1:08. Wait, don't hang-

Click, then back to planning.

Thirty-one registered users on her site by 2:56, when the rate started to drop off. Better than expected. She'd thought twenty-nine. She would have to re-examine the probability charts for that subculture. More math. More models. Update and redesign. The plan changed, the goal remained the same.

3:18. Felicity closed the computer. She had done enough for tonight. She needed to train, needed the practical skill. One way to do it that was safe and simple. She got up, exited her room, and went back to the meetinghouse.

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

"You just want me to watch?" Kara said anxiously. The two of them were poised outside of the edge of a witches barrier, the otherworldly markings and light casting strange shadows over their faces in the predawn glow which was beginning to fill the streets.

"That is correct." Felicity said. "In the event that I am in danger of loosing my life, I would like you to step in and provide assistance. Otherwise, I need to train myself for combat situations. The best way to do this is to experience actual combat situations. You are, in effect, my safety net. You don't do anything unless I mess up."

"Are you sure you don't want me to run it through with you, at least the first time?" Kara said. "There is something to be said for learning from example."

"Our powers do not operate in any compatible manor." Felicity explained. "My power does not operate in a manner comparable with any other fighting style. I will learn nothing of importance from your interference, and it has a projected long term 3.87% decrease in total combat ability by-"

"Okay, okay!" Kara said. "You've made your point." she seemed slightly shaken. Felicity paused. She felt a little sadness creep its way back into her again. It hurt her that her new method of speaking put Kara off, but she couldn't control it, not for long. And it was more accurate. Kara wouldn't see it that way, though. She could only see how much it was changed from the Felicity of yesterday.

She shook her head. She couldn't care about that right now. She had to concentrate on the task at hand. She turned to Kara and nodded once. "We will begin now."

Felicity didn't wait for Kara's response. She knew that she would follow. Well, there was a 99.983% chance, anyway. Stepping over the barrier, Felicity prepared herself for combat.

She fell into a spinning realm, grabbing onto the edge of a merry-go-round as she passed it, the world reorienting itself around her. The painted horses were grotesque caricatures to her eyes, but they didn't seem explicitly dangerous. There was a grunting noise next to her, and Kara pulled herself onto the horse next to Felicity.

"Hold up, Felicity. You don't even know-" Kara began, but Felicity had already thrown herself towards the next platform, grabbing hold of the edge of a teacup ride and bounding to a tilt-a-whirl. A smiling clown jumped out at her, giggling. Felicity's eyes flashed, and she quickly reflected the vectors of the familiar's front half 180 degrees. It turned inside out and puffed into smoke.

She spotted a house of mirrors among the spinning rides. Unexpected given the theme - thus, it deserved attention. She dashed out, streaking towards the door to the mirrored hall, which opened slowly and menacingly as she approached.

Once she had passed beyond the lip of the hall, she was confronted with a million fractured reflections of herself. Up and down ceased to have meaning. Gravity flipped and spun, and she knew not if she was falling, flying, or standing still as the world turned around her. Felicity closed her eyes, then they flashed with power again. Quickly, she edited the photons in the area to disperse into sub-visual packets after one bounce. There was a flash of heat as all of the conflicting light paths converted spontaneously into infra-red, and then Felicity saw the corridor take shape, the mirrors now no longer able to reflect each other. She alighted on the floor of the corridor and walked down it.

"Felicity!" Kara called, opening the far door just as Felicity reached the end. "Wait up!"

Felicity paused for three seconds, as if considering Kara's words, then opened the door. Kara cursed and started running after her again. Felicity released her magic, and the disorientating effect returned. She heard Kara curse again. "Felicity, you don't know-"

Felicity passed through the door to find herself on a balcony floating in free space overlooking a large, rusty Ferris wheel. She jumped off the edge, landing on the 'ground' of shifting light and looking up at it. This felt like the center of the labyrinth. Now, where was the witch?

There was a rumbling, and the Ferris wheel blinked seven large black eyes down at Felicity. She took a step back. There was grating laughter, and the fifty foot iron behemoth wrenched itself forward, knocking Felicity off of her feet as it bent down almost fluidly, looking over at her.

Well, that answered that question, she supposed.

It tittered, tilted, and then tired to fall of Felicity. She quickly decreased the melting temperature of the iron to 0 degrees and then threw a blast of hot air at it, melting a hole. She was dribbled with lukewarm molten iron, but otherwise unhurt. The witch laughed again, starting to spin around her. Felicity increased the coefficient of kinetic friction between the ground and the iron to 0.99995, and with a lurch the witch tore itself in half around her. The two liberated sides of the ride rolled out, both still functional. The more intact side began to fling its carriage cars at her. Felicity inverted gravity on herself, flying out of the way at 32 feet per second per second, then reset, dropping back to the ground to dodge the next set. Dodging one after another, she danced her way around the witch as it attempted to crush her.

Eventually, Felicity decided that she needed to go on the offensive. She edited the properties of the air around her, creating a bridge of invisible blocks which dissipated back into gas as she passed over them. She subtracted an electron from the oxygen around her, and the now ionized gas flocked around her as she cast a strong magnetic field around herself. Felicity jumped through the air, landing on the nearest half of the witch, which screamed out in crackling, wrenching tones. She placed her hands palm down on it, folding the crystalline structure of the metal into a stable fractal pattern, perforating it with trillions of needle sized holes. Felicity's head spun as she did so. It drained her tremendously, she could tell. Still, when she was finished 3.89 seconds later, the entire half of the witches body was made of intricately supported wire mesh. It still had more than enough structural integrity to attack, but that wasn't of concern to Felicity. She transferred her magnetic field to the witch and felt the rush of air behind her as her pure ionized oxygen flooded into the quadrillions of spaces inside of the structure. Felicity jumped back as quickly as she could, then threw a single spark at it.

The witch exploded as the entire structure, soaked in pure oxygen and turned into what amounted to steel wool, combusted faster and more violently than a gas fire. It turned to rust and ash in less than fifteen seconds. The remaining part screamed, slowly melting. The labyrinth fractured, then shattered, leaving Felicity standing unhurt in the center of a warehouse, Kara out on the balcony above her.

Felicity dropped to the ground suddenly, groaning. Quickly, she drew out her soul gem. Once again, she was almost out of magic. Fumbling, she searched for the grief seed of her fallen foe, to no avail.

"Here." Kara said, handing it to her. She peered in, gasping as she saw Felicity's gem. "Oh, Felicity! Did you go into this two thirds down to start?"

Felicity didn't say anything for a moment, shaking slightly as she used the grief seed to purify herself. After a moment, she looked up at Kara.

"I was at full when I started." Felicity said. "It appears that my magic, while often very powerful, is also very inefficient. I appear to barely be able to break even on my power expenditures, if everything goes exactly as planned."

"Break even?" Kara said. "That's not good, Felicity. That's really not good."

"With the supply of grief seeds we currently have, we should not have any trouble supporting my increased energy consumption until the seventeenth." Felicity said. "We do not have to worry about it interfering with our plans."

"Who cares about the plans!" Kara said. "Felicity, how long? After we finish this, how long will you be able to make it?"

Felicity paused. She could just lie to Kara. She really wanted to. Sadly, she bowed her head. Kara put a hand over her mouth.

"Given the increased spending required during the upcoming period, coupled with the lack of witches after that period, and taking into account the fact that, at this point, almost every one of my daily activities, including thinking, is a semi-magical process..." Felicity paused. "The twenty-eighth. Of this month. After that point, my energy requirements will begin to put a strain on the other girls, which will decrease overall effectiveness, which will end with us losing the city and all dying again."

"Less than four weeks." Kara whispered. She gave Felicity a sad look, then shook her head, determination crossing her face. "No. Wait. We just won't have you fight, that's all." Kara said. "We'll contract one extra magical girl to make up for it, and you'll just sit out of the fight. Then, when this whole thing ends, I'll be able to provide you with the extra grief seeds. Then you won't be a drain on resources, and we'll just keep you running like anyone else afterward."

"The entire city is a battlefield." Felicity said. "There isn't anywhere I could go to get out of the fighting. Besides, by the twenty-eighth, I will have served my purpose. You won't need me anymore."

"Like hell I won't need you." Kara said, grabbing Felicity by the shoulders. "There isn't anything worth protecting without you, Felicity."

"It is estimated that one hundred and seventy-four of the magical girls we contract between now and the seventeenth will be dead by the seventeenth of next month." Felicity said without emotion. "I am no more important than any of these other girls, each of whom will have to make a sacrifice to save this city."

"You're my little sister, Felicity. You're more important than all of those other girls combined." Kara said.

"I certainly do not wish to die." Felicity said. "If you are capable of providing me an option which would allow me to continue, I am not adverse to the idea. But I am also very aware that there is no additional option."

Kara started pacing. "There has to be something." she muttered. "I'm not losing you in less than a month, Felicity. It's just not happening." suddenly, she stopped. "The grief seed. You're only half through with it. The Incubators use those things for energy, and you're half Incubator!"

"We can contain and hold the seeds, yes. But Incubators are incapable of biologically extracting energy from the grief seeds. They use a machine on their home world. This grief seed contains enough power for 87,423,371 charges for me, 161,419,316 for a normal magical girl, and 1,614,195,832 charges for you. However, we have no way to access this energy. The technology required to do so will be invented in roughly forty-seven thousand five hundred years." Felicity said.

Kara cursed and started pacing again. Felicity sighed. "It is not a certainty." she ventured. "I do have a 12.93% chance of surviving for longer than that, depending on certain unknown efficiency factors among the other magical girls. There's even a 0.42% chance that I'll make it through until after the event, in which case I will be able to live for roughly as long as you do. Besides which..." Felicity paused, then continued. "We will likely not have to deal with this energy reduction crisis at all."

"And why is that?" Kara asked.

"Given my skill, the rate at which I expend energy, the difficulty of the next few weeks, and the strain that I will be undergoing, I only have a 4.31% chance of surviving that long anyway. Most likely I will die in combat before this becomes an issue." Felicity said bluntly.

"How can you be so calm about this!" Kara said. "You're talking about your own death, Felicity!"

"I have accepted it as highly predictive statistical data. Whether I wish it to be the case or not, I have recognized that it will almost certainly happen. As there is little I can do to change it, I have instead opted to make my life worth living, and use the time I have left to insure as few others as possible have to die." Felicity said. "My plan is currently approximately 8.39% complete. I will insure the survival of this city." she paused. "I will insure your survival as well. Currently, you have a 91.41% chance of 6 month survival. I plan on increasing that to 99% at least." she didn't know why she said that. She was equally surprised to realize that, subconsciously, she really had been doing that. She would have to recheck her models to see if her subconscious protection of Kara had cut out any more efficient methods from her consideration.

"Spend your time worrying about yourself!" Kara said. "_I_ can handle myself. But you have to make it through as well, do you hear me?" Kara dropped to her knees and pulled Felicity into a hug. "You have to survive. Please." she whispered, shaking slightly.

Felicity faltered. "I-I will. Oh, Kara, I will. I... I promise. I'll run more tests. I'll find a way, I swear. I'm the smartest person who ever lived. I'll think of... something. Something else." she felt her chest go cold as she lied to Kara. It felt so wrong, even if it was necessary. Felicity had to die. Kara wouldn't understand, but it was the truth. Felicity had to die. It was the only way for her plan to work.

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

Felicity left Kara there after she had calmed down sufficiently, then returned to her room. She began a check through her models to attempt to cut out any biases she may have introduced for Kara's safety, but after a few minutes she decided to stop. After all, Kara was her big sister. She mattered more than all the other girls combined. Who cared if the models were biased, so long as they weren't so biased as to no longer achieve their goal.

She contacted her interested parties one at a time, gathering them to a cafe downtown for a noon meeting. When she arrived, eleven had actually shown. Five minutes later, the magical girl population broke thirty for the first time in three years. Various levels of shock and awe from the other girls, and she made sure to send them off with a very strong opinion of her. She made sure to stay aloof and as disinterested as she could. After the meeting, she returned to her room. She placed a few calls to the right people with her cellphone, and set the seeds she needed set in the minds she needed them in. Then, she sat back and watched. The first phase was now complete. She needed to give them 93 hours to let her roots grow sufficiently before starting phase two.

In the meantime, she began working on a better model of predictive psychology. She was okay at determining how people would act broadly as individuals and in small groups on timescales of a few hours, but not so good with groups larger than the Dunbar number or times longer than an afternoon. She needed a way to statistically predict how people would act in groups of two to five hundred with fair accuracy over time-spans of three to five weeks. Searching online databases and cross checking with the Incubator's own vast collection of information, Felicity began to piece together the tools she needed for her part of phase two. She had predicted that she would be able to come up with the necessary predictive measures in time. If she didn't, she wouldn't be able to control things to a great enough degree for this to work. The 93.48% chance she had given herself suddenly didn't feel so safe.

A day passed with little success. The data sets she had access to were too broad to make predictions on the scale she wanted. She found a promising lead after about thirty hours, but six hours in she realized that she was a few steps away from finding a predictive model useful for billions of people over hundreds of years, which while impressive wasn't terribly useful for her. Scrap the work and restart.

Eventually, Felicity gave up on her wider knowledge and turned to her simpler models. Perhaps working her way up from smaller sets of data would be more useful than simplifying down from larger sets. A nearby suburban town of 6,700 had been keeping surprisingly good records since 1952, and they had a website. Their data was more on the scale she needed. What they chose to record was almost exactly what she needed, too. Sometimes, luck just happened. Felicity reworked her models from the historical data, examining upwards through each decision and wave of change, each time getting closer and closer to accurate predictions. By the end of the second day, she felt ready. Much sooner than expected. Time enough left to check.

A call to town's mayor, then two of the councilmen. A vote tomorrow at 9:00 on the placement of a water treatment plant. She tipped the balance back and forth, dropped the right hints, and used her model to predict the outcome. While she waited for the results, she went back to work developing a new model, just in cast this one failed.

The results came in. 13-7-4, exactly the breakdown she had predicted. Each individual had voted exactly as she had thought. But that wasn't the hard part. Any analyst with a little luck could do that. She quickly went through the citizen comments. A smile slowly crossed her lips. The people of the town were reacting to the decision with less than 0.09% deviation from her expected model. Not only that, the information was propagating 0.07% faster than she had thought and opinions were forming only 0.16% slower than expected. Each of her twelve active individual case studies, the twelve people she had been able to get sufficient biographical data on, all acted within 1% of her expectations. She used the information from this live trial to put the finishing touches on her models, then finally let herself relax. She checked the clock. 10:46 PM on the tenth. 36 hours until phase two could begin.

Felicity took a break for a day. She was sure she could have used the time for something, but she decided to let herself have fun for a little while. It was a Saturday, after all.

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

"Psycho-what?" Janet said, shaking her head.

"Psychosociology." Felicity said. "Named in reference to Issac Asimov's psychohistory, a fictional science from his book _Foundation._ It allows me to predict how people will act in groups of up to roughly sixteen thousand and on timescales of up to three weeks. I was hoping to devise a more accurate tool for groups of a few hundred like the one we will be dealing with, but the model does still hold for groups of that size. The twenty-two day 80% confidence limit does hamper me somewhat, but it should be sufficient for our purposes."

"It lets you see the future?" Janet said. "Math that lets you see the future?"

"Not see, predict." Felicity said. "And it is weak to outliers. If, say, a nuclear war were to start in the next seven days, my predictions would be completely void. But, yes, I can, with almost perfect accuracy, tell how people will react to a situation over immediate timescales."

"Really." Kara said, skeptical. "Well, then, what am I going to say next?"

Felicity paused. "May I have a scratchpad?" she asked after a moment. Kara handed her a pencil and a piece of paper, and Felicity quickly drew up a web, rapidly preforming calculations.

Thirty seconds passed. Kara tapped her foot, then sighed.

"Are you done yet?" she and Felicity said at the same time. Kara blinked. "No, wait-" they said in unison. Felicity put down the pad of paper and looked at her watch, making it clear that she wasn't paying Kara any attention. "Okay, now you're just showing off." Kara and Felicity said together. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were using your magic to do this." Kara stopped, then suddenly shouted "Sixteen purple flying fish!"

"Number-color-adjective-animal!" Felicity said at the same time. The two girls stared at each other.

"Close enough." they said together, sighing. "You've made your point."

"Good." Felicity said, and Kara sat down, putting her head in her hands. Janet looked between the two of them.

"You had to have staged that." Janet said. "I-"

"You will spend eight sentences beating around the bush, then conclude your argument by saying that we have free will and that it is impossible to predict exactly what someone will do. I will tell you that that is absolutely correct, but that it is easily possible to get close enough that it doesn't matter. You won't believe me, and then you'll ask me to tell you what you're thinking. I'll tell you that it doesn't work like that, you'll get mad that I'm not being clear, then ask that I predict what you'll say. I will comply. You'll try to drag me on for two minutes and fourteen seconds before giving up and saying that I'm using magic to do it, then storm off dissatisfied for a reason you can't quite understand." Felicity said. "I would rather avoid those pointless three minutes forty-eight seconds, if it is all the same to you."

"What?" Janet and Felicity said in unison. "That isn't true... at... all..." Janet looked at Felicity. "You can't possibly actually..." she paused again. "I can't believe..." Felicity looked back at her with a kind smile, a perfect mirror of her speech on her lips.

"She's not using magic." Kara said sullenly from the couch. "I can tell."

"Wait, why didn't you use the scratchpad for me?" Felicity said, Janet saying the same thing a quarter of a second after her. Felicity winced. "Sorry. A little off that time. To answer the question, your thought processes are considerably simpler than Kara's. It was easy enough to do in my head."

"Hey." Janet said, sitting down in a little bit of a daze. "That's... not a nice thing to say." she concluded lamely.

"As you can see," continued Felicity, "I am able to both predict future events as well as provide the correct inputs to insure things go my way. I managed to convince Janet in under one third of the time it would have taken if I had let things go on their natural course. Using my models, I can effect similar changes throughout the coming weeks which will insure that our plan comes to fruition."

"Why are you telling us this." Kara said mutely. "You know how we will react already anyway, right? What's your purpose?"

"I wanted to make you feel better." Felicity said, blinking. "I thought that knowing of my new abilities would provide you with a greater sense of security."

"Well, you might want to recheck your models, then." Kara said. "This is... terrifying, Felicity. I'm terrified for you, and I'm terrified _of_ you. You... you're not human anymore, Felicity. Oh, god..." she looked up at Felicity, her eyes sunken with fear and terrible sadness. "What are you going to do with us?"

"I..." Felicity felt words fail her. She shook slightly, and a tear trickled its way down her cheek. She was feeling only 12% of this, and yet it was still enough to entirely disrupt her train of thought. Kara looked so hurt, and she didn't know why. Her brain rushed to provide a statistical answer, but she shut it down. No. She wouldn't do that to Kara. She couldn't do that to Kara.

She still wanted to be surprised by her. She wanted to laugh at a joke without knowing the punchline. Kara was her wonderful unknown, who she would never touch unless it was absolutely necessary. And now Kara was looking up at her with such sadness, such deep heartbreak, and Felicity felt everything fall apart.

"No. No, no, no." Felicity said, grabbing Kara. "You're special, Kara. You're my sister. No data-set can replace you. I wouldn't take a 99.999% accurate Kara for the real one, not for the slightest moment. Kara, please, don't cry. Please. You're irreplaceable to me. I don't care if I can see out a million years with perfect precision, your reactions still precious and important and... and..." Felicity felt the words start to tumble, and she started speaking in the Incubator's natural, precise tongue as she lost the ability to translate into English in her rapidly deteriorating mental state. After about ten seconds, Kara pushed Felicity away from her.

"You already figured out what my problem was." Kara said quietly. "I didn't have to say it, but you knew."

"Oh, Kara, no, please." Felicity said. "Please."

"I'm obsolete." she said. "We're all obsolete. Give you a pen and paper and you can write our lives twice as fast as we can live them. You know how everything works. And you know exactly what to do to get exactly what you want." Kara looked up at Felicity slowly. "How do I know you didn't set this whole thing up for some greater purpose? Is putting me in exactly this mental state going to cause us to have a zero-point-whatever percent higher chance of falling into your little premade game?" she laughed darkly. "How very boring it must all be for you, Felicity, to have to act so perfectly in a play that you already know the ending too. At least you got to write it."

"I-I haven't..." Felicity started to cry, tears beginning to break her speech as she struggled to think of something. 12% of infinity is still infinity, after all. She released a pulse of pain down the Incubator network, felt it reflected back at her a million fold and distorted by a million unknowing entities who were stunned into inaction universe wide by the event. "I've only had this for a few hours. Kara, I didn't run anything on you. I would never-"

"Shut up." Kara said. "You already know exactly what to say, exactly what to do, to get me to do anything you want. Whatever logic you use, no matter how much you cry, regardless of how many times you plead with me to believe you, I can never trust a single word from you ever again. I don't know why you wanted me to be afraid of you, but I can only hope that this plan of yours is worth it to you. I don't have any choice but to play your game, so I'll do my best to not worry about it. And when I'm no longer useful to you, I can at least hope that whatever remains of Felicity pokes through enough to make it painless."

Felicity opened her mouth, but only a gasping sob came out. This couldn't possibly be happening. She had just wanted to talk with her sister for a few minutes. How had everything been ruined? How could she have messed up this badly?

Three minutes alone with her computer, and she could fix this. She'd come in with an exact plan in place, and everything would just fall in around her. The right words here, the right actions there, give enough space and time to let the edges of her psyche bend, and Kara would love her again. They'd laugh about anything, nothing, and Kara would call her Fills again and they would watch a movie and make funny faces and Kara would love her again. No matter what it took, no matter how long, or what she had to give up, or who had to suffer, she would make things right and perfect and happy and fun and Kara would love her again. Kara would love her-

But that wouldn't work. Because then it wouldn't be Kara who loved her anymore. It would be the puppet that she had turned Kara into. And Felicity would rather Kara hate her forever than ever manipulate her. Because Kara was her precious unknown, her perfect, wonderful older sister, and she would never, ever do that to her.

"Leave." Kara said. "Felicity, please. You've done enough already."

Felicity went cold, and she struggled to her feet. With precise, unconscious steps, she exited the meetinghouse.

She didn't move quite fast enough to miss Kara's screams of anguish.

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

Felicity got back to her hotel room. She threw her computer out the window, perforated the furniture, and used her magic to freeze and burn and shock and vaporize everything around her. Her magic let her edit fundamental data of the objects about her, and she let herself throw the universe's switches randomly and without care. Luckily, the effect was only local. Not due to any control on her part of course, but her power did have a limit, and not a spectacularly large one. She quickly drained all of her magic, then purified her soul gem with a spare grief seed from her box. Still had eighty-nine left.

She wished that she could fall asleep so that she didn't have to deal with this, even if only for a brief, blissful moment.

The twelfth passed without event. Felicity stayed in her room all day. She fixed the furniture with her magic. The starting point for phase two came and passed in a blur, not even noticed by Felicity as it did. She just didn't care enough anymore.

The thirteenth passed as well. Felicity found her computer, smashed on the floor three stories below her. She bought herself a new one for 18,000 USD, the most expensive she could find. Somehow, her computer memory had survived, and she transferred that. She spent the rest of the day looking at the three and a half gigabytes of photos of Kara she had and drinking as much soda as she could manage, purchasing a $20 5-gallon 'keg' of root-beer. Less than half of it was left by midnight. Most of it had come out as tears.

The fourteenth dawned. Felicity plugged back into the internet, and checked on her site. Three hundred and fifty-one users. One hundred and twenty-seven would be willing to make the transformation according to her models. It seemed that her plan had carried on without her. With a few quick calculations, Felicity determined that it was still possible to get her plan back in action before the seventeenth. She needed to do this. She had to save the city. It was all she had left, after all.

Felicity wasted no time, letting her following know that she would be available for transformation at noon in a nearby concert hall. $3,000 got her access to the hall in time for the deadline, and she showed up to a quarter filled room, abuzz with excited chatter. Five hundred seats for an audience of one hundred twenty-seven; not quite as many as she would have liked, as she would have had if she had done it right, but it was enough. It was time for her presentation. Opening night for the Felicity plan.

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

Felicity tapped the microphone, and received a tinge of static back at her on the speakers. The audience calmed down suddenly, the hall going quiet. Anxious whispering filled the air slowly as Felicity stood there, not saying anything. One hundred and twenty-seven pairs of eyes trained on her. Now was really not the time to get stage fright.

"Hello." Felicity said simply, and the talking cut out again, her voice becoming the only one in the room. "My name is Felicity. I am not a representative or a proxy; this is the real me." she snapped her fingers, transforming into her magical girl uniform to awed gasps in the crowd. "The one hundred and twenty-seven of you gathered here have come for a chance to receive magical powers and be granted a wish. This will be done. However, it is not all that will be done." she paused, letting a little murmuring start in the crowd. "I have, to the best of my knowledge, never lied to any of you. The information which exists on my site is all accurate in its descriptions of magic, and the responsibilities which magical girls are subject to after receiving their powers. However, I have not told you the whole story."

There was a sudden increase in volume as people whispered back and forth between each other. Felicity let them converse for 8.73 seconds, then raised her hand. "Let me explain. I am not referring to any hidden costs, or secret additional issues which accompany becoming a magical girl. I have already given you all available information on the status of individual magical girls. You should all be familiar with the fact that you must fight witches to regain your powers, and that if you run out of power you become, yourself, a witch. You should all be aware that if your soul gem becomes destroyed, you die. These are all things which you already know, or at least have had free access too. Again, I do not refer to any information concerning the individual magical girl. I refer to information concerning magical girl groups."

"Our city is at the brink of a crisis. A rather major crisis, as it happens. The witch populations are growing without bounds, and the magical girls available have no chance of keeping up. Even all of you aren't enough. We need another two hundred of them by midnight on this Friday, or the city will be lost. By this, I mean that everyone, every single person in the city, will be dead within three months."

The crowd erupted into loud conversation, which Felicity again let propagate for 19.34 seconds before silencing the gathered girls. "However, it is not yet too late to stop this. A population of three hundred and thirty-one magical girls, if reached by midnight on Friday, would be enough to stop the tide before it overwhelms us. But this population can not be a group of free agents." Felicity paused again. "On their own, magical girls come into conflict with each other. Sometimes they get hurt, or tired, or just don't feel like working. Three hundred and thirty-one free agents are worth only approximately two hundred and sixteen working in concert. I don't just need you to become magical girls. I need you to join me in a magical girl army." Felicity let the final statement sink in.

"Why should we listen to you?" one of the girls asked. "I mean, other than having, what, a week more experience than us, you don't know what you're doing. You've never run anything before in your life!"

Felicity sighed heavily into the microphone. It wasn't necessary, but it would add to the performance. "I invite you to have your say, miss..."

"Yana." the girl said, stepping up onto the stage. Red hair, long face, intelligent eyes, perhaps sixteen years old. The 'natural leader'. She was one of three major dissenting voices, the other two being the self-centered opportunist and the antisocial. Any of the three would have worked, but Felicity was secretly glad that this girl had stepped up first. It was the fastest of the three paths.

"Don't get me wrong, Felicity." Yana said. "I appreciate what your trying to do. You obviously are trying to make things better, in your own way. But just because you introduced us to this world of magic doesn't mean we should let you lead us. How many witches have you actually fought?"

"One." Felicity said.

"See? Not very much experience, when you get down too it." Yana said. "What groups have you lead before?"

"None." Felicity said.

"And no leadership experience." Yana said. "Felicity, you do want what is best for the city, right?"

"Yes." Felicity said.

"I'm not trying to say we shouldn't form up." Yana said. "I think we need to, if your information is correct. But I think that whoever leads us shouldn't be a leader by default. We need to approach this logically and calmly, like any other crisis. I'm sure we can do this – but we should have the best person for the job leading us, not the person who found it first."

"I agree." Felicity said.

"We should have a vote." Yana said. "To chose our leader."

"No." Felicity said. "That is incorrect and illogical."

"What?" Yana blinked. Felicity watched the charm begin to drain out of her face. She had, of course, figured that the fourteen year old would love to have an option out of leading, and would easily go along with whatever she said. "Why not?"

"We do not have nearly sufficient information. In order to accurately chose a leader, the voting members of a democracy must have clear and complete information on their candidates. If not, it becomes nothing more than a glorified popularity contest." Felicity paused. "However, I will allow the vote anyway, as it will provide a greater sense of comfort to the people gathered, who have been raised in a society which has been conditioned to consider democracy as the ultimate form of government. It will not change the results. The vote will occur in two minutes and thirty-two seconds, and it will result in my unanimous selection as leader."

Yana shook her head. "You know, saying things like 'two minutes thirty-two seconds' doesn't actually make you sound smarter. It just makes you sound like a-"

"-stuck up know it all who's trying too hard." Felicity finished with Yana in sync. She paused.

"Wait, how did you know what I was going to say?" they said in unison.

"I predicted it." Felicity said. "Along with the time. You see, I will not be holding the vote, in two minutes and eighteen seconds now. It will occur spontaneously as the group draws upon the general realization that I have clearly made my point." she cocked her head slightly. "You called me a know it all. This is far more accurate an assessment than you initial anticipated."

"What is this, some trick with your magic?" Yana said, looking around.

"No." Felicity transformed back into her normal clothes. "I am now incapable of casting magic. This will not hinder my progression."

"We'll see-" Yana started, Felicity easily mirroring her. She closed her mouth, opened it again, then closed it tightly. Felicity turned to the rest of the crowd.

"I will provide a demonstration." Felicity stated. "Please, would you all take a different seat?"

There was a murmurer. Felicity turned around to face Yana. "I am presenting Yana with a predrawn sketch of the seating arrangements as they will appear in exactly sixty seconds, so that you can be sure that my image has no way of updating or modifying itself to fit the situation. This is not a trick. If I get so much as a single place incorrect, I will sit down and let Yana run the show from here on out. I encourage you to sit anywhere."

Silence fell. There was a shuffling, and then people began to get up and walk around. People changed seats, then changed again. Some stood up and walked to the corners of the room. A few stood on chairs, or lay between multiple seats. In general, they acted as one would expect a room of twelve to sixteen year old's to act if told that someone could, with full certainly, predict exactly what they would do.

Felicity clapped suddenly. "Time is up." she said. "Yana, would you please place the chart under the projector?"

Yana glanced up from the chart, her face going white as a sheet. She nodded slowly, then put the chart on display so that the others could see.

A gasp filled the hall. In Felicity's neat, precise handwriting, marked down on the page was a perfect replication of the seating arrangements currently taken. She had marked every person straddling, everyone standing, everyone who were sitting together in the same seat, even the three people who had left the room entirely. Everything was absolutely perfect. Well, almost.

"As you can see, I have neglected to mark Yana's position correctly." Felicity noted. "I had assumed that she would be less taken aback by my presentation, and would have taken part. As agreed, I will now let her run the show." Felicity walked down from the stage, sitting down in the front row of the hall.

Silence filled the chamber. Felicity counted down slowly, precisely. Six... five... four... three... two... one...

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

The vote was unanimous. Felicity was elected to lead the group due to her obviously unspeakably advanced intelligence and evident commitment to keeping her promises. She put Yana in charge of subgroup management, then went and converted the one hundred and twenty-seven of them into magical girls.

Throughout the presentation, she continued to show signs of her abilities. It didn't take too long for the others to gather that even her 'mistake' had been planed perfectly for the reaction she wanted. She saw fear creeping its way through the crowd, as first the most intelligent, then more and more of the people came to the same realization that Kara had. Someone who knew exactly how you would act could always manipulate you perfectly to do whatever they wanted, and you'd never know. If you did what they said, it was because they had set things up so that you would. If you rebelled against their commands, they had set it on purpose to get you to do so. If you went into a loop of self-doubt, of guessing and second guessing, they would know exactly where you would stop, and exactly what to say or do to get you to act exactly as they wanted. A person with that kind of power could use anyone for any purpose, and the person being manipulated wouldn't even know it.

They weren't wrong. She had already started, in fact.

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

"Hello." Felicity said, speaking into her phone. She had her laptop open, and was sending messages rapidly away, keeping in close contact with those she needed contact with. On the phone, a gruff older man huffed.

"Who is this?" the man said. "Who are you?"

"My name is Felicity Harbor, a fourteen year old girl inside of your voting district. In two minutes and fourteen seconds, your secretary is going to walk out of your room. Then, seventeen seconds later, your campaign committee is going to inform you that they are resigning their positions. The lights will then flicker four times, staying dark for two second periods and separated by eight seconds. After this, you will be given a letter from the bank in charge of you campaign fund with the words 'listen closely' written on it. I will call you back in three minutes fifty seconds."

Felicity hung up before the man could speak, and turned her full attention to her messages. She finished them, took a bite of a cookie that Yana had brought her, and then called the man again, exactly three minutes and fifty seconds later.

"Who are you representing?" the man asked anxiously.

"My own interests, as it happens." Felicity said. "What, you weren't aware that a fourteen year old girl was secretly in control of the United States? You're behind the times, Mr. Congressman."

"Please, no jokes. And, let the poor girl go." the man said.

"Oh, I assure you, this is no joke." Felicity said. "I am nothing more than a soon-to-be-citizen with a public health concern that I want your cooperation on solving."

"A... public health concern?" the man said anxiously.

"No, I am not holding my city hostage." Felicity said. "This is not a play by me to gain any kind of power. I already have all the power I could possibly want. I know that you know where I am. You have already searched Felicity Harbor and determined that she is, in fact, a real person. You have most likely informed local law enforcement about her. I will save you the trouble; I'm not home, and I didn't really feel like going to school today."

"What is this about?" the man said. "Is this some kind of terrible practical joke? Have you been talked into this by some high-school delinquents?"

"Please, will you take me a little seriously." Felicity said. "I would have thought I would have earned at least that much. Or do you need another demonstration?"

"No!" he said. "Okay, fine, I'll stop asking questions."

"Good. That will make this much easier." Felicity sighed. "Now, Mr. Congressman, as I was saying, my city is facing a public heath concern. In particular, we have an infestation of witches, an evil magical creature which preys on humans." Felicity paused. "I understand that this will probably come as a bit of a shock, so I have already dispatched a team of my... friends, to show you the validity of that statement. They should be arriving in..." Felicity checked her watch. "Five seconds."

There was a pause, and then the sound of glass shattering. There was muffled yelling, indistinct voices, and then the phone was put on speakerphone on the other end.

"So, I think the guy's convinced." Jenifer said. "He certainly looks it, anyway."

There was some giggling from the room. Felicity let herself smile. Just because they had a greater purpose didn't mean that she couldn't let herself enjoy the moment. She had put Jenifer in charge of a group of five other girls. They were her elite team, made up of only the best – in her case, that meant anyone who had a basic understanding of what they were doing, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

"See, Mr. Congressman? Magic." one of the other girls said, and there was a crackling sound. "Totally real."

"I..." he said, stuttering.

"Please, give him some room." Felicity said.

"What... do you want from me?" he asked slowly.

"Well, me and my girls are more than capable of handling the magical end of things." Felicity said. "But, well, we need some help on the physical end. Not very much, mind. All we want is access to the emergency warning system. We need to be able to order city-wide evacuations on our call, to make sure no one gets hurt. You understand, of course."

"Of-of course." he said lamely.

"Oh, and we'll also need someplace large enough to act as a base of operations for, say, five hundred people." Felicity said. "I take it that won't be too much trouble either?"

"No." he said sullenly. "No, it won't be."

"Hey, cheer up." Felicity said. "We're the good guys. You're just helping us to protect the city, that's all. You do what I've told you, and you'll never hear from us again. No one will be able to explain the infrastructural damage, but strangely no one will have been killed, and in a year everyone will have slipped back into complacency. Be a good boy, and I'll even tip the next election for you." Felicity paused. "Thank you for your time." she hung up.

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

Felicity knocked on the door of the meetinghouse. There was a pause, then the sound of quickly running feet. The door was flung open. Kara looked down at Felicity, stunned for a moment.

"I came back." Felicity stated simply. "It's tonight. The night of the seventeenth. The deadline is in one hour and fifteen minutes." she paused. "I know you can't trust me, but I would request that you come with me. You should know that it couldn't possibility forward my plans to decrease the number of active magical girls, so you shouldn't be concerned-"

Kara grabbed Felicity in a hug. "I missed you." she whispered. "You've been gone for six days now, and I haven't seen a single sign of you. I thought you might be gone forever, that the next time I knew where you were would be after the battles when I came across your dead body. Oh, Felicity, never let me do something that stupid again. Please."

"I can't promise that." Felicity said. "I refuse to manipulate you, Kara. I... I can't do that to you." she smiled softly. "Or Janet. And I'm having increasingly harder times convincing myself it's okay to do to Jenifer or Yana or Bretta or Samantha... What kind of a mastermind am I, incapable of disrupting the purity of those I care about, even in their interests?" she sighed. "It's going to-"

"Felicity, stop defending yourself, shut up, and let me hug you." Kara said.

Felicity complied.

After a little while, Felicity refused to count exactly how long, Kara released her. "I believe you." she said softly. "No matter what, you're still Felicity inside, aren't you? And Felicity would never do that to me. I'm still terrified of you, but... I'll get over it. Just, please, don't run away again."

"Is Janet here?" Felicity asked.

"No. She's with the Incubator off converting our group now." Kara said.

Felicity looked inside the house, pausing for a moment. "Eighty-two, right?" Felicity said. "Not bad, all things considered. Why aren't you..." she paused. "Oh."

"I couldn't leave, not if there was a chance you'd turn up. Even if the fate of the world was in the balance, I couldn't have left." Kara said.

"Eighty-two isn't enough, you know." Felicity said. "Even if you can get all of them to convert."

"Yeah, and I bet you have the full three hundred and thirty-one ready to go." Kara said. "No, wait. You have exactly two hundred and forty-nine, because you knew we would-"

"Two hundred thirteen." Felicity said quietly. There was a pause. "I only ran the most basic of models for you, Kara. Models based on only past data, not personal emotions and reactions. It predicted that you'd get one hundred and thirty-three. I was aiming to provide at least three hundred personally, but I took a forty-eight hour hiatus in the middle, and this was the best I could provide for. I figured you would be able to pick up the slack. After all, the totals still reached." she paused. "But I never accounted for you caring as much as you did. You literally didn't leave the meetinghouse, did you?" she laughed softly. "You're not the only one who fell behind. I started the second phase of my plan a full two days late because I was crying too much to put on the performances I needed. We both lagged below our expected yields by so much that we ate our one hundred man margin and still ended up thirty-six short."

"How did you know?" Kara said. "How did you know how many people we had if you didn't predict it?"

"The coffee table." Felicity said. "You've counted out eighty-two grief seeds. It was an educated guess."

"So, wait, we only have two hundred and ninety-five?" Kara said.

"Yes." Felicity said. "We only have two hundred and ninety-five. We are thirty-six short."

"Thirty-four." Kara said. "You haven't counted us as part of the total yet."

"Thirty-four..." Felicity paused, thinking. "And with my skills, we should easily be able to get the seventeen other magical girls to join us..."

"Oh, yeah!" Kara said. "I did convince six of them already, so that's down to twenty-eight."

"If I can talk to the other eleven, it should take me seconds to get them to join us." Felicity said. "So we really only need seventeen more."

"Can you do seventeen in... seventy-two minutes?" Kara asked.

"I'm the smartest person that ever lived." Felicity said. "I'll figure something out."

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

It wasn't easy, but it worked.

Felicity and Kara showed up to the open park where Janet had gathered the eighty-two girls. Felicity spoke for five minutes and twenty-one seconds, and then all eighty-two converted. Twenty of Felicity's girls showed up, and the group moved to their recently acquired headquarters. There had been a military base here, just outside of the city limits, but it had been abandoned suddenly and without warning yesterday and turned over to Felicity. It was sufficient for their purposes. With some careful wording, Felicity managed to integrate the two groups seamlessly.

She told them that they had fifty minutes to gather another eighteen girls. Of their own accord, the girls scattered into their groups and went searching. Two hundred eyes, looking for seventeen more for their ranks. The remaining ninety-eight, the eighty-two of Kara's girls, thirteen of Felicity's, and Felicity, Kara, and Janet, began the initial training of the new girls. Felicity left after a few minutes, taking Kara's list of other magical girls and contacting them one by one. They began to show up slowly, piece by piece, until all seventeen of them had gathered. She instructed them to provide training support, and after a few minutes they were more than willing to follow her orders.

The other girls began to trickle back in. She got a call from Yana. They had gotten thirteen, and were bringing them in. Jennifer's group had gotten four, Olivia's three, Eva and Anabel two each, and six others with one apiece. Thirty total. Plenty.

At midnight, Felicity performed the final contract, then turned to the others. Three hundred and forty-four. Thirteen more than they needed. And just barely in time.

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

"Three hundred and forty-five." Felicity said, the crowd calming down and turning to listen to her. "Three hundred and forty-four magical girls, plus Janet." there was nervous laughter. "Our minimum viable population was three hundred and thirty-one. Congratulations. We made it in time."

There was a pause. No cheering, no clapping. Felicity smiled. "Good. It seems that you all realize that we haven't actually accomplished anything, not yet. We have gathered an army, but we haven't done anything with it. The witch populations are still higher than ever, and only continuing to rise." she paused. "Tonight, three hundred and thirty familiars will separate from their witches, to become three hundred and thirty more witches in two weeks time. Thus, if we can kill more than three hundred and thirty witches tonight, their totals will begin to, slowly, decline. That is why we needed exactly as many of you as we did. Each girl must kill one witch every night from now until we eradicate their populations completely. Each day, slightly less witches will be born, which will decrease their total, which will slowly lead to a spiral of population decent for them. But we have to be perfect. There isn't room for error."

Yana stepped forward. "I have assigned you into teams of two." she said. "Each team will be responsible for killing two witches between now and noon tomorrow. You should work together to provide assistance to each other. Remember, if you die while in combat, you haven't just failed to kill one witch, you've failed to kill all the witches you were predicted to kill in the future. Every one of your lives are integrally important to the success of our mission."

"The teams will act as a unit." Felicity said. "It would be safer from a combat perspective to send you in groups of five, but because of how our magic works, we would end up running out of grief seeds in about seven days. A group of two spends just barely less magic then they get from a grief seed, so it is unfortunately the maximum sustainable size for a unit."

"We will, of course, still act as a base of operations, and teams should feel free to, and are encouraged to, help other teams if they have the ability to do so." Yana said. "We will make sure that resources get to where they need to be, and that every part of the city stays as safe as we can make it."

"We're counting on you." Felicity said. "Let's save this city!"

There was a cheer, and Felicity turned away from the assembled crowd, walking over to where Kara and Janet were standing, talking with the senior magical girls. Yana would handle the crowd; she was a natural leader, after all. Felicity had work to do.

After all, the hard part had just started.


	3. Part III: Population Cycle

Part III: Population Cycle

"You really should have seen this coming." Yana said, holding out a clipboard to Felicity. She blinked, then looked up to Yana.

"This is a rest order." she said slowly. "For me."

"Yes, it is." Yana said. "As head of personnel resources, I get to determine when someone needs to take a break. Felicity, I'm ordering you to stop working."

"I could replace you." Felicity said lamely.

"No, you couldn't. You haven't been on active duty for about... thirty seconds now." Yana said, looking at her watch.

"But... I have things..." Felicity said weakly. "I'm working on stuff..."

"Felicity, look at me." Yana said. Felicity did so. Yana had worry in her eyes, and Felicity almost looked away. "This came as a surprise to you, didn't it?" Yana said. Felicity opened her mouth, but Yana put her hand up."Don't try to hide it. I can tell when you're lying – you might know exactly what to do in any situation, but you're not actually that great of an actor. You're so exhausted you can't even make predictions anymore. You need to take a rest."

"I need to be present." Felicity said. "My constancy of presence give a nine point …. three... maybe... percent increase to moral."

"Felicity, it's just twelve hours. The twelve hours from 4 AM to 4 PM, no less – by far the least active time for our group. You need this break. You'll come back more ready and able to do the work you've set for yourself, and you know it."

"But-" Felicity started, but Yana cut her off.

"No buts. You haven't slept in about three weeks now, Felicity. You barely eat and drink. You aren't perfect, as much as you try to pretend to be. You're falling to stress."

"I don't need to sleep anymore." Felicity said, but she didn't offer any other criticism.

"Why don't you go and talk to the other girls?" Yana suggested. "We don't see very much of you unless something is going wrong. It would do everyone a bit of good."

"Fine." Felicity said, getting up. "But if something goes wrong, you have to call me, okay?"

"I know." Yana said. Felicity sighed, slowly walking out of her office, if you could call the room an office with its cold walls and rows of computer banks. "Hey." Yana called, right as she crossed the threshold.

"Yes?" Felicity asked, pausing.

"Kara would really appreciate a visit, I'm sure." Yana said softly.

"I saw her only two hours ago." Felicity said.

"You saw her team to congratulate them and give them a new assignment." Yana said. "That doesn't really count, Felicity."

"Alright. I'll take the suggestion on advisement." Felicity said. She let the door slide close behind her.

Felicity leaned down, picking up her already packed bag and switching out of her uniform with the prepared clothes she had gathered in anticipation of the event. She smirked slightly. Of course she had seen this coming. She had known to the second. Just like everything she did, even this down time was part of the plan.

"Thank you for this anyway, Yana." she said softly to herself.

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

"... and then Kara was all like 'oh, you need to hit the weak points to make sure it says down', but I was like, 'no way am I going to waste that much time', so I just jumped in there and sliced everything I could see into little pieces. Lo and behold, the witch died. Kara yelled at me for a little bit, but I could tell she was secretly impressed." Jenifer said, a few other girls gathered around her and nodding to her story. The red lobby was surprisingly full for 04:30, but it wasn't too unexpected. The whole group's sleep schedule had slowly been drifting towards fully nocturnal as they spent more and more of their nights fighting. Still, Felicity wouldn't have been surprised if there were fifty people here; six more than she had predicted. Oh well. She wasn't too fussy about how they spent their time off.

"Kara tells a very different version of that story." Felicity said, walking up to the group. "She says that you nearly got yourself killed, and if she had not stepped in and taken care of things behind the scenes, you would be four times dead by now."

The crowd parted, turning to Felicity with respectful glances. Jenifer, however, just smirked. "Of course she'd say that. She's afraid that if we don't watch our shadows closely enough they'll rise up and rebel against us. Granted, that mentality has made her perhaps the longest lived magical girl ever, but still. I have a higher kill count than she does."

"I know. You have a higher kill count than everyone else, almost three times the average." Felicity said. "Forty-five in ten days. Not bad."

"Someone has to make up for your lazy ass." Jenifer said. "You have, what, three now?"

"Four." Felicity said, blushing. "I am just applying myself to other tasks."

"Right." Jenifer said, stretching the middle syllable and adopting an obvious sarcastic tone. "Of course you are." she waved Felicity over. "Come on. You have something to tell me, right? You never just come to visit."

"Who said it was for you?" Felicity said. "And, as it happens, I am not currently on active duty. I have been forced into a short break by my underlings." she raised an eyebrow. "I do consider you my friends, you know. I have to spend most of my time making sure you do not all die, but trust me, I would much rather be doing... whatever it is that you people normally do."

"Oh, wow. That's really convincing there, Felicity." Jenifer said sarcastically.

"Do not get me wrong, I would much rather be doing other things than that as well. But I do not actually enjoy having the weight of the destiny of 2.39 million people laying on my shoulders. I would rather be doing just about anything other than what I actually have to be doing." Felicity sighed. "I am not human, but then again, neither are any of you, and I do not believe that any of you would argue that you feel the weight of life and your decisions any less than you would have before."

"Well, with all due respect, you do a damn good job of it." one of the other girls, Ferra Goodchild if Felicity's now perfect memory wasn't failing her, said suddenly. "I mean, there were three hundred and forty-four of us on the seventeenth. It's the twenty-eighth, we've been in constant battle for ten and a quarter days, as a group we just passed our fifty-five hundredth kill, and there are still three hundred and thirty-two of us. All things considered, that's absolutely amazing."

The other girls nodded. "Um..." one of the younger ones stepped up sheepishly. "I'm really glad you're in charge, Felicity. I feel safer knowing you're always thinking of ways to help us." she wrung her hands. "Everyone thinks you're doing a great job."

"Be careful not to mistake causation and correlation." Felicity said. "I predicted that we would have just passed 3,500 kills today. This group has exceeded my proficiency expectations by nearly 60%. I was hoping to get 1.05 witch per magical girl per day; you have given me 1.61 per girl per day. I am not sure how much of this was my leadership and how much of it is due to you all being a standard deviation above what I expected."

"I believe that one even less." Jenifer said. "Felicity, failing to predict something?"

"Do you seriously think that I would have gathered three hundred and thirty-one of you if I knew two hundred and sixteen would be enough?" Felicity said. "This came as juat as much of a surprise to me as the rest of you. I blame the inconsistency on you all helping each other more than anticipated, and the willingness of the seventeen previous magical girls to train you. Honestly, what happened was that everything lined up for the best case scenario while I was planing for the middle case. Of course, I have updated my models now to more accurately reflect the situation."

"So, when are we done?" Jenifer asked. "I mean, if anyone knows, it would be you."

"June 12 or 13." Felicity said. "We'll have killed every witch in the city in sixteen or seventeen more days at our current rate."

"Aw, really?" Jenifer said. "Man, I was hoping this would last longer than that."

"I see." Felicity made a note to push Jenifer subtly into a more peaceful disposition. That could wait, of course, until she was back on duty. She would respect her orders. "Do any of you have a suggestion as to what I might want to spend my time doing? I'm not allowed to go back to work for eleven and a half hours."

"You should see your sister." Jenifer said immediately. "Kara is really worried about you."

"I see." Felicity repeated. She felt a little regret well up inside of her. She had changed so much that she needed to ask for advice on how to spend down time. "Thank you for your advice." she said.

"Hey, and when you're done with that, come find me." Jenifer said after a moment. "We'll, uh, do something fun. Okay?"

"Okay." Felicity said. "I will make a note of that."

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

"Here, hold this." Samantha handed Felicity a clipboard as she entered the room, not even acknowledging her. "Can you read me the top three numbers?" she asked, tapping a flask on the table and writing some notes on the secondary pad she had on her.

"Thirty-four; nineteen; twenty-seven." Felicity said deliberately, and Samantha made a few additional notes on her pad. "May I ask what you are doing?"

"Residue check." Samantha said. "I got some fabric soaked with some slime inside of one of the labyrinths, and I'm checking if there's any detectable residue of any kind. If even trace amounts persist, we might be able to use chemical detectors to find witches, no magic required. Set enough up around the city and we could get a real time map of witch movement in the area."

"I see." Felicity sighed. "And you were going to report that experiment when, exactly?"

"What's it to you? You're not on duty." Samantha said. Felicity opened her mouth, but Samantha put her hand up. "Dark colored casual clothes; you're doing your best to appear as normal and unassuming as possible. No papers on you, so you're not delivering anything to anyone, and you came to the labs, which are at a dead end in the building, so you aren't headed anywhere. These things are not that hard, Felicity."

"And they say I am smart." Felicity said.

"I'm just observant, that's all." Samantha said, turning to face Felicity. "But you aren't here to talk about science with me, or to help me with an experiment. What are you doing here, Felicity?"

"Well, I am not on duty." Felicity said. "I was hoping that you might need some help, or want to talk." she paused briefly. "I do appreciate your company greatly."

"You want to talk to a friend?" Samantha said. "Now, that's atypical behavior if I ever saw any. Are you okay?"

"No." Felicity said honestly. "No, I am not okay, but it is not significant enough to delay the plan."

Samantha turned to Felicity, a calm look on her face. "Well, if you need someone to talk to, I'd go see Kara. I'm sure she'd appreciate it as well. After that, I'd go and just hang with as many of the other girls around as I could. I'm sure it would do you a world of good to see how much trust people place in you, Felicity. Hell, even join a group on a hunt or two. See the progress of your people with your own eyes."

"I will take that under consideration." Felicity noted.

"Oh, and if you have the opportunity, bring me something that gets covered in any goo you find." Samantha said.

"I will remember to do so." Felicity said. "I am truly glad you convinced me to create a science division. Though it will likely not do much for us in this fight, the information you get may save the lives of magical girls in the years to come."

"'Managed to convince you', right." Samantha said sarcastically. "Still, I'm glad to be of use. God knows I can't fight well enough to pull my own weight."

"You and me both." Felicity said, walking out.

"Hey." Samantha said. "Uh... thanks. For coming to me. Sorry I couldn't be of more help."

Felicity nodded, then exited the room.

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

"Oh, hey, there you are." Bretta said, walking quickly over to Felicity. "I've been looking for you. Can you approve some of these team re-arrangements? Oh, and these updated patrol paths." she handed Felicity a pen and a small stack of papers.

"I would love to, but I am not on duty right now. You will have to see Yana for that." Felicity said, not accepting the proffered objects.

"Felicity, not on duty?" Bretta said. She smiled. "About time, if you ask me. Everyone needs breaks, even you. I have to imagine that its really starting to weigh on you right about now."

"What is?" Felicity said, but she already knew what Bretta was going to say.

"The deaths." Bretta said. "You know that they're going to start to increase soon."

"I know." Felicity nodded. "You have done an amazing job keeping them as low as they are, but there are certain factors which we can not control for."

"1.61 witches per girl per day." Bretta said. "It sounds great, but it's too good to be sustained. We're burning through our magic faster than we thought. Our reserve of grief seeds just dropped below two hundred. By June first, we're going to have the first girl turn into a witch. Statistically, anyway."

Felicity nodded. He models agreed with the assessment. Bretta was the second oldest magical girl in their group at almost eighteen months; her intuition of how people worked together in battle was near perfect. As was her realistic view of the situation. "We're going to lose seventy-one more." Felicity said. "Before we finish, we are going to have lost eighty-three. It is much better than the one hundred and seventy-four that I had predicted before gaining an accurate assessment of our group, but it is still far too many. I have run many simulations, but I can not seem to get the total any lower."

"That's what, eighty-three counting the twelve we've already lost?" Bretta said. "I'd call that pretty good. We're protecting a city of nearly two and a half million, Felicity. One dead for every thirty thousand saved is an incredible rate."

"I am aware of the necessity." Felicity said. "I just do not envy you the choice of who to give the last spare grief seed to."

Bretta paused briefly. "And I don't look forward to it." she said softly. "But it has to be done."

Something began to click in the back of Felicity's mind. A new phase of the plan beginning to form. It was still fuzzy, but it was growing. She gave Bretta a long look. Maybe...

"Anyway, you shouldn't be thinking about that right now. You're on break." Bretta said. "If you're here, I'd assume you've already seen Kara. How is she doing?"

"I have not been to see her yet." Felicity said tersely.

"Well, what are you standing around here for, then?" Bretta said. "Go see your sister!"

"Everyone I have talked to has said the same thing." Felicity sighed.

"That's because it's a good idea." Bretta admonished. "She's your sister. Come on, Felicity. You don't have to be so formal as to not even see her."

"It has been noted." Felicity said.

"Come back once you're done, okay?" Bretta said, shaking her head. "I thought you two liked each other."

"We do." Felicity said. "There are... other factors involved."

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

"Ungh..." Kara blinked herself awake slowly, giving Felicity a tired appraisal before shocking herself fully conscious with a start. "Felicity!" she said. "Is something wrong?"

"Quite the opposite." Felicity said. "I am currently on break."

"Oh, uh... that's great. You really do need them every once in a while." Kara paused. "Is there a reason you needed to wake me up to tell me this?"

"Everyone is refusing to do things with me until I have seen you." Felicity said flatly. "None of them seem to realize that you are typically asleep at five in the morning."

"You could have just told them that." Kara said. "And not have woken me up. I would have liked that option."

"I see." Felicity paused for a few seconds. "Well, I suppose I should leave, then." she turned to go.

"Uh, no, Fill, please." Kara said. "It's... the twenty-eighth today, isn't it? The day you said that you'd..."

"That I predicted for my own death, yes." Felicity nodded. "It appears that I was mistaken. The group gathered was more proficient at witch killing than I had originally thought. I should not, barring any unforeseen difficulties, die today."

"Oh, thank god." Kara said, sighing. "I've been so worried. 'Nothing is more certain in this world than Felicity's answer to a mathematics problem'. I was so sure that you'd be dead by tonight."

"I was working with incomplete data. It is only natural that the true value might deviate from the expected given the circumstances." Felicity hesitated. Kara sighed, giving her a sad look.

"But you know now, right?" Kara said. "You have more accurate data. You could figure it out-"

"Thirty-three hours, twelve minutes." Felicity said. She smiled sheepishly. "I said it would not be today."

"2:20 PM tomorrow?" Kara said aghast. "We did nearly half better than you'd thought, and it bought you one day!?"

"More than half, actually. Closer to 55%." Felicity said. "And, as a function of availability, your success would actually have increased my lifespan to the late afternoon on June 2, assuming there was no additional intervention, which there very well might have been considering my popularity with the group."

"Would have?" Kara asked.

"I can predict my time of death to within a second now. This is not due to a probabilistic calculation on my part, but rather-" Felicity began, but Kara cut her off.

"What." she said flatly. "You can't be serious. You're going to commit suicide tomorrow?"

"In a manner of speaking." Felicity said. "It is required for the fourth phase of my plan."

"The fourth phase?" Kara said, giving Felicity a stunned look.

"Yes. The first was setting the initial seeds to gather the required girls. The second phase drew them together and set myself in charge so that we would work as a team. The third concerned itself with the survival and success of the group while I was leading it. The fourth..."

"Is the survival and success of the group after you die." Kara said.

"Correct." Felicity nodded. "As I have less than one percent chance of survival for the remainder of this war, it is necessary to provide for the group as a whole as much support as I can for the time after I am dead. As it happens, according to my models, the optimal time for my death is 2:21:13 PM on May 29. It would have been 2:21:13 AM, but I was given a twelve hour break which I will respect and thus can not continue with my plans currently."

"This is ridiculous." Kara said. "How can you possibly know-"

"Though my models for battle are not as accurate as they could be, my models for personal reactions are very robust." Felicity said. "Remember, I am using my psychosociology to predict and influence our group. The models will hold for twenty-two days to 83.98% accuracy. And this war will be over in seventeen. I only require 22 hours, 21 minutes, and 13 seconds to provide the necessary inputs which will insure the highest rate of success for my plan."

"But you'll be dead." Kara said. "You..."

"Kara..." Felicity paused. "I know this must upset you immensely. But I am okay with this. I have accomplished more than I could have dreamed of only a month ago, and my greatest triumph is still to come. We are the heroes of our time, and as any hero knows, sometimes the only way to achieve your goal is through sacrifice. If my goal was to survive, I could do so easily. If it was even to survive with the two of us, I could accomplish it simply. But my goal is much greater than that; it is something I am willing to die for."

"Saving the city." Kara said. "2.39 million people for your life. God, Felicity, I can't say you're wrong to think that way, but-"

"Then do not." Felicity said. "I have made my choice, Kara. Please, do not make this worse for me."

"When did you stop using contractions?" Kara muttered, too shocked to provide more appropriate input.

"I have a request of you." Felicity said.

"What? What do you need?" Kara said in a mildly standoffish manner.

"A hug." Felicity said. Her expression collapsed, and the fear she felt crept into her eyes. "Please."

Kara's face melted. "Oh, god, Felicity..." she pulled Felicity into her embrace. "You're really scared, aren't you?"

"Yes." Felicity shook slightly. "I do not wish to die. I just know that it is the best choice for my plan. I am willing to make this sacrifice. But I do not want to. Oh, god, I don't..." Felicity shook more violently, and Kara pulled her in a little closer. Felicity let Kara hold her as she shook, let herself lean in on her older sister for support one last time.

Eventually, Kara released Felicity. She had tears in her eyes, but she was smiling. "If you're this scared of it but are deciding to do it anyway, it's the right choice." she said, her voice beginning to break up. "I knew this was going to happen. Oh, my sweet little happiness. I wanted to keep you out of this so, so badly... the life of a magical girl never ends well. At least you get to chose what to die for. It's all I could have hoped for after you made that contract."

"I'm..." Felicity said, her speech returning to that of the Felicity of a month ago as she remembered herself. "I'm so sorry, Kara. I wish there was another way."

"I know." Kara said softly. "Just make sure that you succeed, okay? I can't have you dying for nothing."

"Then, I do have one more request." Felicity said.

"What is it?" Kara asked.

"I want your permission to treat you as a mathematical object as well." Felicity said. "It's the only variable I have left, but... I just can't, not unless you say that it's okay."

Kara gave Felicity a long look. "Just make sure you succeed, okay?" she said more forcefully. "No matter what, Felicity."

"I understand." Felicity nodded. "Now, naturally, you can't tell anyone what I've just told you, or the plan won't work. It has to come as a surprise, and foreknowledge of the plan makes it possible to work against it."

"Naturally." Kara said, regaining her composure. "Hey, you've started using contractions again."

"I suppose I needed you to help me feel a little more normal again." Felicity said.

"You're still on break for another elevenish hours, right?" Kara said. "Why don't we have lunch together?"

"That sounds great." Felicity said. "I would... love to do that with you, Kara."

"I'm not going to miss my last opportunity to be normal with my sister." Kara said. She shook her head. "Though you ruined my sleep. I won't be able to go back to bed after this."

Felicity found Kara's actions to be strange. She had accepted this far to quickly, and was acting far more calm then expected. After a moment of reflexive hesitation, she quickly drew a rough sketch of Kara's psyche. The answer became obvious to her quickly. There was only two ways to react to the knowledge that someone you cared about would be dead before the following night. Either you could freak out and loose any time you had left, or you could act as normally as possible and remember what made each day special enough to matter in the first place. It was only natural that her sister would take the second path. Or, at least, it was 96.32% likely.

Felicity left the room, giving Kara space before she would break down in 23.08 seconds. She would spare her the guilt of seeming more distraught than the person who actually had to die.

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

"We won't let you down, we promise!" Moxie said, giving Felicity a nervous look. Jenifer just laughed.

"Oh, come on. Felicity's softer than she'd have you believe." she said, tapping on the edge of the witches barrier nonchalantly. "She wouldn't be able to tell even if you do mess up, which you won't, because I'm here." she grinned. "And I'm the best."

"This isn't an inspection, in any case." Felicity said. "My 'break' only forbids me from doing things related to my job, which happens not to include witch hunting given my position. I'm just coming along as support for you two."

"She's also terrible at it." Jenifer said. "So I'm giving you the all important job of teaching our fearless leader how to actually hold her own in a fight."

"O-oh, I'm sure..." Moxie said sheepishly.

"She's exaggerating, but only a little." Felicity said. "You don't have to be so worried."

"But..." Moxie paused. "I mean, you're Felicity. Like, _the_ Felicity."

"We live in the same building." Felicity said flatly. "We see each other every few hours, Moxie. We ate dinner at the same table just three days ago. How have you possibly managed to put me on a pedestal that big in such a short time?"

"You're amazing." Moxie said. "A real superhero. You've changed people. You're saving the whole city! How could I not?" she sighed. "You can do anything."

"I couldn't pull two other girls out of a class A witches trap on 1/3 power, give the grief seed to them, then go on to finish my own assignment early." Felicity said, and Moxie gasped. "If you're worried about impressing me, I can assure you, you already have that covered."

"Oh, that was nothing..." Moxie said, blushing.

"Yeah, right." Jenifer said. "And that's why they stuck you with me, the strongest fighter in the group. Because you suck so much that I'm the only one who can balance you." she continued sarcastically. "Oh, wait. No, that wasn't it. It was because you have the fifth highest kill count and a record of bravery and they wanted the two of us together so that they could just throw us at literally anything and not worry about if we would survive or not." she hit Moxie on the back lightly. "Quit it with the hero worship. Felicity is cool and all, but you could totally kick her ass." she paused, giving Felicity a wry smile. "No offense."

"None taken." Felicity said. "My calculated 2.31% chance of success in battle against her agrees with you."

Moxie looked back between the two of them. "Am... I on camera?" she asked lamely after a moment.

"No." Felicity said. Jenifer laughed and grabbed Moxie by the shoulders. Moxie looked very confused. It suddenly came to Felicity that Moxie was of below average intelligence.

"Well, are we going to kill a witch or what?" Jenifer said.

"That is our assignment." Moxie said. "Right?" she asked Felicity after a moment.

"Yes." Felicity nodded.

"Okay then." Moxie nodded, took a deep breath, and dropped into a combat pose. Suddenly, she seemed completely focused. Felicity shook her head. Whatever worked, she guessed.

"Alright, move in!" Jenifer yelled with a smile, drawing her glowing blades and leaping into the barrier. Moxie followed after her in measured, controlled step, with Felicity taking up the rear.

The inside of the witches labyrinth was dark as night. Wind whipped up at them, cold wet spray carried in the gusts. A flash of lightning revealed them to be standing on a rusted iron platform, floating in what appeared to be an empty void. Thick chains connected theirs to a few other platforms around them, clacking and groaning in the wind. The air smelt vaguely of sulfur.

"Cheery place." Jenifer quipped. "I like what they've done with it."

"I can't see any signs of how to traverse the labyrinth." Felicity said, glancing around rapidly, looking for some indication of which way the witch lay. "The platforms don't appear to be arranged in any discernible pattern, and there are no obvious landmarks."

"The witch will show up. They always do." Jenifer said. "And, well, if no clues show up, we can always use the tried and true method of 'cut everything larger than a breadbox into ribbons until something changes'. That usually gets attention from whatever you're attacking."

"No familiars either." Felicity noted. "You'd normally see at least them running about."

"It's coming." Moxie said suddenly. She tensed up. "Eight hundred feet. Below us and rising." With a flash of light, two pink pistols sprang into her hands, and she trained them with unbelievably steady hands towards a point slightly below the three girls. Felicity strained to see what Moxie had detected. Faintly, she spotted movement in the direction which Moxie indicated, a dim light rising through the dark. It grew in radiance rapidly, drawing quickly to their height. Felicity took in the view, appraising coolly and calmly the witch, who appeared as a sphere of what looked like lightning, no core visible. Already, her mind began to identify possible battle schemes, methods of avoidance and strategies of movements, tagging places where they were likely to be trapped or rendered ineffective by terrain as she began to generate an attack plan.

Jenifer drew her plasma blades and cackled wildly. "Oh, this one looks interesting!" she yelled, then leaped into action, charging at it. Felicity rolled her eyes. So much for planning.

Felicity ran after Jenifer, content to let the other girl take charge of the situation. After all, she was the combat expert. Moxie followed with Felicity, keeping her pistols trained on the witch. Once they'd progressed to the point that they were less than 200 feet from it, she began to fire her pistols rapidly, her aim true, the pink bolts of light which erupted from the muzzles leaving clear impacts on the sphere. Jennifer was far in the lead, nearly at the witch by then, preparing for her first attack. Leaping into the air, she slashed downwards across the sphere with her blades, landing on a nearby platform hard and dodge-rolling out of the way of the witches counterattack. It let out a almost melodic crackle of electric power, then flashed with light brightly enough that Felicity felt it wise to avert her gaze. Jenifer let out a yelp of pain, but by the time the light had dimmed enough for Felicity to see again, she had dodged clear and was nursing some minor burns. Throughout all of this, Moxie's pistols continued to discharge steadily, her gaze unflinchingly trained on her target.

The witch seemed to notice this, and turned its attention to the younger girl, letting out a off-key melodic electric giggle like someone had fed a MIDI of a creepy little girl laughing into a musical Tesla coil. It began to approach her, accelerating across the space towards Moxie's position. Felicity prepared to step in to defend the other girl, but right before she was required to do so, Moxie dropped off of the platform she was standing on, landed on one of the connecting chains below her and, without missing a beat, continued to fire upon the witch as it flew through the position she'd been in only a second before.

The witch stopped immediately, as if inertia was simply something it could chose to ignore selectively, and dropped directly down upon Moxie with astonishing speed. Felicity had about enough time for her eyes to go wide before she was entirely engulfed by the cloud of crackling energy.

"Moxie!" Jenifer screamed, impacting on the cloud a second later, disappearing inside it with a bellow of fury. There was pained screaming for a moment, and then the cloud dispersed in a burst of purple light. Moxie was face down on the platform, her clothes already transformed back into their non-magical counterparts. Jenifer took one step, her eyes wide, clutching her chest, before the damage caught up with her and her soul gem shattered into sparkling dust. She fell to the floor limp. Felicity felt the labyrinth breaking up around her, the witch joining the two magical girls in death.

Felicity took a deep, ragged breath. Tears budded in her eyes, but she blinked them back, concentrating on her power. Her mind reeled in calculation for a brief second, and then she let her power flare, consuming most of the space she could see. With purpose, she decreased the local speed of light to a quarter of a mile per hour, shifting the relativistic reference frames around herself. She leaped across the room at what was now far beyond the speed of light, and, as all things that travel at greater than light speed must, fell backwards in time.

Her power ran out at the same time her leap took her to where Moxie had been standing, less than a quarter of a second before her death. The two girls tumbled out of the way of the sphere of energy, which impacted just inches from their prone bodies. Jenifer gave out her yell, and Felicity turned to warn her, but dropped to her knees from the overwhelming exhaustion which tore through her form. She weakly mumbled her commands, but she knew that it was too late. The cloud exploded in purple light again, and Jenifer stood there, her eyes glossy from the pain, her clothes and skin in tatters. She looked at Felicity and Moxie, uncomprehending. Then she smiled, a kind, happy smile, and her soul gem exploded from the strain.

The labyrinth crumbled around them again, this time leaving two of the girls alive in its wake. Moxie didn't say anything for a moment, just laying prone next to Felicity. Felicity felt her shaking slowly, unable to contain her grief. For Felicity's part, she felt altogether too tired to care.

"How?" Moxie asked quietly. "She was the best."

"Accidents." Felicity mumbled. "One mistake and you die. That's how it works." she lifted up her soul gem to her eyes, its surface black and mottled. She couldn't really think right now, for whatever reason. It felt like a great cloud had descended over her senses. Her mind was suddenly very, very quiet, in a way it hadn't been for almost a month.

Moxie noticed Felicity's soul gem, her soft tears interrupted suddenly by a startled hiccup. "F-Felicity?" she said. "What..."

"I did something very stupid." Felicity said calmly.

"You've burned out completely." Moxie whispered. "You... use some of you power to save me, somehow, didn't you?"

"Tachyonic Antitelephone." Felicity said. "Any object moving faster than light speed, if it follows the laws of relativity, has to pass backwards in time. Simple math, really." she coughed, struggling to keep her mind on task. "I saw the two of you die, so I just lowered the speed of light and popped back to save you. Sorry I only managed one." she sighed. "But it made a paradox, you see. I'm a reality warper, so that's not so much of an issue, but it's more energy intensive than I thought."

"I don't care what happened." Moxie said, obviously unable to follow Felicity's words. "We need to get you recharged."

"Accidents." Felicity said. "One mistake and you die. That's how it works."

"Shut up." Moxie said harshly. "The witch must have dropped a grief seed. We'll get you back on your feet."

"No, no." Felicity said. "Moxie, please. Listen to me. I only have a few seconds left, and I need someone to listen. I'm not running low, Moxie. I'm out. I'm in the red. Currently, I'm only conscious on borrowed time. I expect that if I wasn't so confident in my own plan and happy for saving you, I'd have already become a witch."

"Felicity, no, no. I won't understand a word you say. At least hold out until we get someone smarter here." Moxie pleaded.

"Shh. You don't have to understand, you just have to memorize." Felicity said. "Look. I need you to tell everybody that this is all according to plan."

"It is?" Moxie said.

"Shh, shh." Felicity said. "Really, it's no big deal. I'm serious. This isn't exactly how I wanted it, but I wouldn't be much of a master planer if I didn't have a plan B. Everything is going to be okay, but, Moxie, I need you help."

"I'll do whatever you need." Moxie said. "Felicity, please, don't die."

"It's too late for that." Felicity said. "You know, I'm sort of sad that I didn't get to spend much time with you. It feels a little cheep giving a death bed confession to someone you've known for ten minutes, but you seem like a nice girl. Could have had worse. Could have been Janet." she laughed. "Don't tell her I said that."

"You're rambling." Moxie said anxiously. "I'm having a hard time following you."

"Sorry." Felicity said, trying to pull herself together. Everything was going dark around the edges, and it was getting harder and harder to stay on task. "Tell Yana to take over. Bretta already has a pretty good idea of the challenges ahead, and I've been dropping them little clues here and there to make sure they know how to deal with things. If you can get the message to them first, everything might still go okay."

"The message?" Moxie asked.

"Uh." Felicity felt fog clouding in. "Um. On my desk somewhere. It'll be in an envelope marked 'emergency E-2.', with some names. Just get the letters to the people they're addressed to before you tell people I'm dead."

"Okay." Moxie said.

Felicity struggled to her knees, sitting up in front of Moxie. She placed her soul gem down in front of her, and looked at if for a moment.

"I'm not strong enough to break it myself." she said. "I'm sorry to have to ask this of all things, Moxie, but I need you to kill me before I turn. If I become a witch, it'll undermine morale so much that any chance of coherency will be lost."

"At least let me try to find the grief seed first." Moxie said.

"No, Moxie. It won't work." Felicity said weakly. "Please." but Moxie was already searching the ground, trying in vain to save her already dead friend. Felicity felt everything fade from her, and her body went limp.

"Moxie..." she mumbled. "Tell Kara... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry..."

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

"So, after you killed Felicity, you came back here and didn't speak to anyone else until seeing us?" Yana asked. Moxie nodded, nervously playing with the two grief seeds in her hand. Kara could barely keep herself from smacking the little girl. Not even giving Felicity the dignity of dying human... or, well, of dying Felicity, anyway, and then lying and saying that she had? She wanted to tear Moxie into little pieces for that. But she took a long, deep breath, and restrained herself. "Okay. Moxie, I'm sorry that you had to be a part of this. Don't say anything to anyone until we've made an announcement, okay?"

"Okay." Moxie said quietly.

"We need to discuss our next move." Yana said. "If you wouldn't mind leaving us, Moxie."

Moxie nodded, then filed out of the room. A tension lay over the three girls left behind; Kara, Yana, and Bretta sitting in silence for a moment as they tried to come to terms with what the future might now hold.

"Well, leader, any ideas?" Bretta said to Yana. "You're in charge now."

"I can't believe she managed to get herself killed while on break." Yana said softly. "Maybe she would have been better off if I'd never tried to force her hand." beyond this, she had no comment. A few more seconds passed in silence.

"I can't imagine how this must be for you." Bretta said to Kara. "It's a tragedy for all of us, but you... she was your sister."

"I'm fine." Kara said unconvincingly, even to herself. "I know how to deal with loss. You just ignore it until you have the time to grieve, which is certainly not this time. We're still in the middle of a war, and out best general just died. We've got to-"

"Bullshit." Yana snapped angrily. "She was your sister, Kara. You can afford to be upset about it."

"Yeah, but you can't." Kara said flatly. "And seeing as you obviously are, someone has to actually step up and deal with things until you get your act together."

"Do you think we have a chance?" Yana said. "Felicity was the one with the plans. She never told us any of the-"

"She planned this." Kara said. "She planned this from the beginning. She always intended to die now. She told me as much weeks ago. This _is_ the plan. She knows we can fend for ourselves. We're as strong as she could make us, but not yet so dependent on her guidance that her removal would be impossible to deal with."

"And you let her?" Yana said. "You just let her die?"

"No. She came to my room last night and convinced me that she was planning on doing it a day from now instead, so that I wouldn't try anything." Kara said.

"So she gave you two numbers, and you're just picking the one that fits!" Yana said. "She messed up, okay? She wasn't perfect. But she was damn well better than the rest of us, and... and..." Yana shook with emotion, then sagged and sat down. "And she's dead. And we can't do anything about that."

Kara took her envelope off of the stack, looking at it for a moment. She tore the seal off, and looked at the letter. "I knew it." she muttered. "Of course. She wouldn't settle for anything less."

"What?" Bretta asked, leaning over.

"I planned this from the start, up through your frustration with Yana's greif, and knew that you'd go here looking for proof. You're right. I tricked you so that you wouldn't try to stop me, while also simultaneously adding a little doubt to a few key members so that I'd seem more human. It was the only way to effectively become a martyr and prevent you from stopping my plan." Kara read from the page. "See?" she said. "It was all part of her plan. It all is. And she wanted you to become leader, Yana. So get out there and lead."

Yana shook her head for a moment, then sighed. "I'll need some time to write a speech." she said quietly. "It's going to be one hell of a hard sell to keep people optimistic in spite of this."

"You two are best suited for that." Kara said. "I'm going to go out on assignment. I... need to kill a lot of things right now."

"We will grieve." Bretta said, looking the other girls in the eyes. "But just not right now. We have to keep ourselves under control, because there's more than ourselves at stake. Okay?"

"Okay." Kara nodded tersely.

"Okay." Yana said quietly.

Kara walked out of the room, leaving the two real planners to write their speech. She was sure that it would be good; after all, they were plenty good at leading on their own. Yana, despite some flaws, really was the natural leader type. She'd do fine.

Once she was far enough away from the others that they wouldn't see her, Kara flipped over the page from her letter to the other side, reading the real message that Felicity had left for her.

_I'm sorry. I just want to start with that. You deserved better then this. But, at least, at the end, I can be honest with you._

_If you're reading this letter, then I failed. Sort of. It's easy to predict what sorts of things would lead people to open what letters, so it would be easy enough to fake it to seem like this really was all part of the plan. That's what I've done in everyone else's instructions. But I trust you more than any calculation, so I don't care if there's a 38.47% chance that telling you the truth will lead to a collapse in the group. I know that's wrong, because you're my older sister, and my older sister always looks out for me. You can't let me down, Kara, because everything you do is always 110% of perfect._

_I can't get every variable in a situation. It's just not possible. Even if you have a system which could perfectly predict the universe, which I can't anyway, it would still be limited by how accurate your data is. And, even if I did have all of the data, everything was always a probability. Every 46,656 times you throw the dice, you'll get six sixes in a row, and every 46,656 times you'll wind up rolling six ones. I missed a variable, or misinterpreted some data, or just got a little unlucky. Whatever the case, the result was most definitely not to plan._

_But I'm not worried. Maybe it'll be a little rougher than I planned for, but I'm confident that you'll still succeed. The group is far stronger than I original thought, so you've got more buffer room then I anticipated. It means that I don't have to tell you to 'run if you see these lines', because you don't. I'm almost certain you'll still make it. You all have good heads on your shoulders, and I've made sure to set things up so that even if I bite it a few days early, things should still go basically according to plan._

_There's only one thing I want you to do for me, Kara. It's very important, perhaps the most important instruction I've given to anyone. Think of it as a last request, my final wish._

_I want you to find a boyfriend, get married, have kids, grow old, and live life until quietly dying in your sleep in your nineties. It's a bit of a tall order, but I think you can handle it._

_I'm so, so sorry._

Kara put the letter down. She continued to walk down the halls of the compound silently, until she reached her temporary quarters. She sat down on the bed, put a pillow over her face, and began to scream.


	4. Epilog: Overshoot

Epilog: Overshoot

_Thirty-seven months after the death of Felicity._

The two girls sat across from each other, silently sipping on their milkshakes. They weren't avoiding each others eyes exactly, but neither seemed interested in starting a conversation. The older of the two girls, a young woman really, flicked her long red hair out of her eyes with a hand, looking with almost sad eyes at her yellow haired companion. The younger stared out the window, looking at the sparse shrubbery that studded the ruddy colored ground outside. Two girls, sitting in a quiet roadside diner, their milkshakes disappearing in the silence.

The red haired one fidgeted briefly, then took a deep, sighing breath. Before she could speak, however, the younger girl, without turning from the window, started.

"73." she said briefly, letting silence settle again after her simple statement.

The red haired one blinked with muted surprise, then sighed again. "So you've kept track?"

"Of course I've kept track." the yellow haired one said, turning to look up at the other girl. "I'm the ditz, not the jerk."

"Sorry." the red haired one said. "You're right. Of course you've kept track." Silence hung in the air again as she struggled to find words to say. "God, this sounds cheesy, but how has life been to you, Moxie?"

Moxie shrugged. "That's not my real name. I never told you my real name." she looked sadly at the older girl. "I'm Priscilla. Yeah, it was a stupid, pointless thing to do, but fourteen-year-old me didn't think it was a cool enough name for someone with magical powers." she sighed.

"Which do you want me to use?" the older girl asked.

"Moxie, please." Moxie said. She shuddered for a moment, but gave the older girl a sad smile. "As bad as it sounds, I feel more alive as 'Moxie' than I ever will as 'Priscilla'."

"I know what you mean." the older girl nodded. Another silence seeped into the space between them as Moxie collected her thoughts.

"I've had a good three years, all things considered." she said, just before the silence became unbearable. "High school hasn't really been that much trouble. I'm not having too much trouble supporting myself. I have a little apartment in the town nearby, nice enough for one teenaged girl living alone. It was hard, the first few months, being alone. But I've gotten used to it." she paused briefly. "Barely enough witches to keep me running, if you were wondering. I don't have any grief seeds to spare."

"Don't worry, I'm not trying to invade your territory." the older girl said.

"Sorry." Moxie shook her head. "I know that I shouldn't be so suspicious of fellow FA magical girls, but it's hard to turn the paranoia switch off once it's been turned on."

"Are you having trouble?" the older girl asked. "I could help you if you need to keep someone else off of your turf."

"Yana, I'm sure you have other things to be doing." Moxie said, giving her a smile. "You're nineteen now, right? How's holding two full-time jobs been going for you?"

"Well, luckily one of those two jobs is 'student'." Yana said. "I got a rather large scholarship, almost a free ride, attending a state university. As for the other, well, let's say that state universities are plenty large enough to house healthy populations on their own. Being the campus magical girl is going quite fine for me."

"That sounds nice." Moxie said. "Being useful."

"Oh, don't get down." Yana said. "I'm sure Crystal Springs would be lost without their magical protector. A few freak accidents in a town of 3,200 and there wouldn't be a town."

"I'm not their protector." Moxie said bluntly. "I'm here because it's quiet, cheap, and there are enough witches floating about to keep me topped off, barely."

"Self-serving or not, I doubt this town would be here if you weren't active." Yana said.

"It's true, isn't it?" Moxie said. "So much of how the world works is dictated by what little naive girls in flashy dresses do behind the scenes."

"I'm sure they're appreciative, even if they don't know it." Yana said.

"Yeah." Moxie looked down at her milkshake for a moment, swirling her straw back and forth. "What are you here for, anyway?"

"It's summer. School is out, and I don't have a job. I'm doing a bit of traveling." Yana said. "Honestly, I didn't know you were here until about an hour ago. You're not exactly easy to contact, you know."

"Did you think that that might have been a hint?" Moxie said darkly.

"You've really changed, haven't you?" Yana said sadly.

"Yeah. Of course I've changed. I've been fighting for my life alone in the middle of nowhere since we scattered three years ago. A fourteen-year-old with no support group in an endless battle just to keep the lights on?" she pointed up at the electric lights above them, then down at her ring. "Both of the lights? Yeah, I changed. If I hadn't, I would have been one of the 188 who aren't still alive, rather than the 73 that are."

"You could have asked for help." Yana said. "About fifty of us are still in contact. We can't always support each other, but we try to do what we can."

"Magical girls groups don't work over extended periods of time when they're larger than two members." Moxie said. "Felicity's words, not mine. Someone smart might be able to juggle it, but I'm not the smartest person. I've eliminated the variables instead." she glared at Yana. "It's been working fine so far."

"Not if you're barely scraping by and having to deal with a territory fight." Yana said.

"I've dealt with other girls before." Moxie said. "I'll deal with this one too."

"Okay." Yana said, sighing. "Loner is a personality type, I suppose."

Silence fell between them again. Moxie pretended to be distracted while sneaking looks at Yana, while Yana did her best to pretend not to notice. A waitress approached them. Yana noticed that she seemed specifically wary around Moxie.

"I've brought your orders." the waitress said nervously, placing their food down on the table. She paused, leaning in a little towards Moxie. "Is she one of your, uh, friends?" she asked, tittering slightly.

"Yeah, someone I knew from a few years ago." Moxie said. "Before all, uh, this. No one to be worried about."

"If you say so." the waitress nodded, leaving without a word.

Yana cocked her head slightly at Moxie. "Do you run a gang or something?" she asked incredulously.

"Not so loud, if you wouldn't mind." Moxie said flatly. "And it falls more into the 'or something' part of that. Also, run might be a bit misleading. Just... look, don't worry about it."

"Okay." Yana said, putting her hands up. "None of my business."

"No, no, it's nothing like that..." Moxie growled. "Stupid Marie. I don't run a gang, Yana. I'm not in charge of anything. But, well, there are people here, people that make the other townies a little uncomfortable. Sometimes, if their names get mentioned around me enough, they stop doing whatever made the others uncomfortable. And if they don't, sometimes they stop showing up in town. And sometimes the ones who do come back start acting real strange around me. You know how it is. People put one and one together after enough time passes."

"I thought you said you weren't their protector." Yana said, raising an eyebrow.

"I didn't want you to get the wrong idea." Moxie said. "I expected you to be more against the whole 'vigilante justice' thing."

"What else, exactly, would you consider magical girls?" Yana said. "Sure, the rest of us are less explicit about it, but I get it. Moxie, I'm not the enemy. Or, at least, I'm trying really hard not to be."

"I know." Moxie said, sighing. She suddenly looked really tired. "I've been having a kind of shitty week, so you'll have to forgive me."

"Moxie, really, if you need help-" Yana started, but Moxie put a hand up.

"Let's just eat, okay?" Moxie said. "Please?"

Yana nodded. The two ate in silence for a few minutes, neither looking at the other. Suddenly, with no lead up, Moxie started talking again.

"It's really hard, you know?" she said sullenly. "Having to follow your own plan. I mean, sure, the other stuff it hard too, but... I don't know where I'm going, you know? I've never been a planer. I only see things in the moment. Despite how much I've changed over these years, that hasn't. I can't tell you what I'm doing one month, three months, a year from now. My future is maybe the next two weeks, if I strain it a bit. There's no certainty." she looked down. "Fuck it. I miss Felicity. I _liked_ being under the control of someone who knew what the fuck they were doing. After that, you realize exactly how little the rest of the world actually knows. No one in charge knows shit. No one but her. We keep pretending we know what the fuck is going to happen in our future, and we make our little plans, but it's all just loudmouths pissing into the dark and hoping if they spray widely enough they'll hit a little of the truth. It's all stupid and pointless and... and..." Moxie sighed. "and there's nothing I can do about it."

"I should have checked on you sooner." Yana said softly. "Moxie, when is the last time that you refreshed your soul gem?"

"Yesterday." Moxie said stiffly. "I'm not that desperate. I keep myself topped off."

"Can I see it, then?" Yana asked.

Moxie paused. She closed her eyes, then put her hand over her ring, drawing the gem out. Yana gasped.

"That's what topped off looks like?" Yana asked.

"It's a bit cloudy, that's all." Moxie said.

"It looks half used." Yana said bluntly.

"Whatever." Moxie said. "It stores the same amount of power as it always has. I don't see the problem."

"Our soul gems darken when we start to take curses upon ourselves. They're not only a measure of our remaining power. A magical girl on empty with a strong will and purpose can still be farther from turning into a witch than one with a full charge but no will." Yana said. "How long has it been like this?"

"A couple of weeks, maybe." Moxie said. "I don't know. I haven't really been keeping track. I don't pay attention to time anymore, really. I've got a strong idea of the years by the seasons and that's about it."

"Moxie, you need help." Yana said. "I'm serious." she paused, then reached into her satchel, placing two grief seeds onto the table. "Take these, to start. A little security might take a bit of stress off the edge. But this isn't going to be enough. You need time to rest, a safe place with people who can help you. If you don't get it soon, you're going to-"

"I don't need your help." Moxie said. She stood up, walking out of the booth. "I don't need your handouts, and I certainly don't need your protection."

"Moxie, please." Yana said.

"Thanks for the meal." Moxie said, turning away.

Yana looked down at her hands.

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

_ Thirty-eight months after the death of Felicity._

"You should write a memoir." Janet said in Kara's ear, and Kara laughed lightly. "No, K, I'm being dead serious. Stop laughing."

"Old ladies write memoirs." Kara said. "I'm only 21. Not an old lady just yet."

"No, people with experience write memoirs." Janet said. "And you've had enough experiences for a lifetime."

"Oh, come on." Kara said. "Who would read about me? Seriously. There are plenty of more interesting things to learn about."

"No, this would totally work. 'Eight Years a Magical Girl, the Story of Kara Harbor.' You'd sell millions. Oh, wait! It'll take you time to write it anyway, so schedule a 2007 release and make it 'A Decade a Magical Girl.'" Janet said.

"Janet, no one would believe me." Kara said. "And if they did, it would be even worse. Besides, who even says that I'll be alive in two years for the decade? I have plenty of other things to worry about."

"Oh, come on. You're the oldest magical girl who's ever lived, far as we know. Something tells me that after you've survived the first eight years, you're not about to drop out of the running." Janet said.

"It's only a matter of time before I run into a witches circle, or a bad magical girl turf war, or even one of the triumvirate. Even I wouldn't stand a chance against Kali or Walpurgisnacht or Solace." Kara said. "It's just statistics, Janet. If one in two magical girls die every six months, then one in sixty-five thousand, five hundred and thirty six will make it eight years."

"Statistics don't work for individual people, unless Felicity left you some notes." Janet said, and Kara winced. Of course, Janet couldn't see that through the phone, and continued blithely on. "I'm going to bet that far less than a quarter make it to one year – I'll even bet that as little as a tenth do. And from there, I'll bet that less that 1% total make it to eighteen months. But here's the kicker. I'd also bet you that half of those who made it to eighteen months make it to three years, and half of those who make three years make six. Because once you've lived through the great filter that is the normal, daily life of magical girls, I'm going to bet that you're a whole hell of a lot less likely to die to it. Now, I don't know where the edge of this filter is; those numbers are examples. Fuck if I know the real ones. But it just makes sense that, at some point, your death rate is going to be much lower as you get more and more competent, and I'm almost certain that that filter is behind you at this point."

"Maybe you're right." Kara sighed. "Maybe between my broken wish and my natural skill, I've managed to game the system enough to stay on top. But if I start thinking like that-"

"You'll lose the edge that keeps you there, I know." Janet said. "Still, I hate how pessimistic you are about the future."

"Whatever works." Kara said. "And I'm not pessimistic. I'm a realist. Being a magical girl is deadly. We've lost almost four in five of all the magical girls we've ever met, and the only reason it's that low is the 73 left from 'Felicity's Army', none of whom have exactly a normal rate of death."

"Which leads me to believe that skill and planing really does have something to do with survival." Janet said. "Sure, one person could be a statistical anomaly, but 73 of 344 making it past the three year mark? That's not random. Under your 'half every six months', there should be..." Janet paused, thinking. "Uh... five or six left. I think. Anyway, like it or not, you've got a long life ahead of you. I'm almost certain."

"Maybe you're right." Kara said again, not really wanting to argue farther. "But I'm not writing a memoir, and that's final."

"Oh, come on!" Janet said, but she laughed softly. "Heh, I guess that isn't really like you anyway, is it? You're more of a 'forward into the future' kind of girl then a 'learn from the past' type."

"You can't change the past." Kara said. "What's done is done. Time travel isn't real, even in this world of magic. But we can shape our present to make it more like the future we imagine, if we're willing to spend the effort. There isn't really much use in dwelling on the past."

"Well, speaking of the future, when will I see you again?" Janet asked. "You've been gone nearly two months already."

"I don't know. I can't imagine it'll be more than another month." Kara said. "But these girls in Berlin really need the help. I've just barely managed to stop the fighting between them, but the situation is far from stable. Not to mention Erma and Helmine, who are both still on a fast path to self-destruction. It's... I know I can't stay here forever, but they're children, Janet. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen year olds."

"So were we. You started at thirteen, remember?" Janet said.

"And I can't believe how stupid, impulsive, and naive I was back then." Kara said. "Do you seriously think back on that time and not see just how wrong we were for thinking we had it figured out?"

"I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that they can take a little more stress then you're giving them credit for." Janet said. "Kara, you know how much I support this outreach project of yours. But if you stay in each place for six months, you're only going to be able to help two places a year. Not to mention that if you stay too long, they might get used to your help and lose out on developing their own edge. Giving too much assistance could be just as bad as not giving enough. You've stopped the interpersonal fighting, given training, saved a few lives, gotten things back on track. The area is stable again. It's not good, but, Kara, we're talking about magical girls. It's never good. They fell down and you picked them up, and I think that you should be proud of that. But now they're back on their feet, and you can't walk for them, even if you want to. You know that staying longer isn't going to do much good. You just don't want to see the new friends you've made get hurt, which is understandable. But that's on you, not on them."

Kara sighed. "You know, for someone who can't add three digit numbers correctly all of the time, you're scarily perceptive when it comes to people."

"That's why you talk to me." Janet said.

"Alright. Look, give me five days to take care..." Kara paused, then sighed. "To say goodbye, alright?" Kara said. "I'll be home by the end of the week."

"Okay. Well, in that case, you might want to start brushing up on your Japanese." Janet said.

"You have a new location for me?" Kara asked.

"Yeah. City in Japan, Kazamino. 2.4 million people, so just like home. I don't know quite how bad it is there, because our network doesn't really include Japan yet – but it's bad enough that someone there got desperate enough to track _us_ down online for help. From their email, I think that they might have only, like, three magical girls total there. I didn't want to say this up front, because then you might be pressured to leave Berlin early even if it wasn't okay, but... well, I don't think we've encountered a worse case than this. I've already contacted some of our friends; you'll be going with another five girls. You honestly might need the help."

"Great." Kara sighed. "Well, I always wanted to go to Japan, I guess."

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

_Forty months after the death of Felicity._

"What was she like?" one of the boys asked, cleaning a strange looking pistol with a faintly glowing purple liquid. "This, uh, Felicity." he paused, looking up at the older girl. "If you don't mind me asking."

"Smart, courageous, kind, selfless, determined, always trying her hardest to make the world a better place." Samantha said, not looking up from her workbench. "Honestly one of the five greatest people I've ever met. Deserves a spot in the history books. Managed to accomplish in three weeks more than most do in a lifetime. And so, so very human." she paused, turning up to glance at the boy. "Why do you ask?"

"I don't know. I guess I was just curious as to what someone had to do to get in your good books." he said.

"Well, you don't have to worry about that." Samantha said, finishing the repairs on the goggles as she spoke. "You're never even going to come close. No point looking into impossibilities."

"Oh ha ha." he said dryly. "Thanks a ton. I can almost feel the appreciation in your tone."

"Don't break your goggles every mission and maybe I'll be nicer." she teased, handing him back the goggles. He put them on, hitting a switch on the side. "Are they working now?" she asked.

"Yeah, the display has gone back on." he said.

"Max, what's that, fifth time this month you've needed repairs?" one of the other boys called. "These things aren't toys, you know."

"Shut up." he said. "I take the most dangerous missions that the rest of you pansies won't touch. So what if I get a little more banged up; it's to be expected."

"You act rashly before you get the rest of your team together, you mean." A girl snarked, and he flushed.

"Okay, settle down. I don't want a cat-fight in my workshop." Samantha said. She turned down to the workbench to hide her smile. "Speaking of missions, how has my little remedial team 2 been doing recently?"

"Henry's still out with a broken leg." the girl said. "The three of us are doing fine on our own, though. Five witch kills, three familiars. Hardly remedial."

"Eight in a week?" Samantha laughed. "There was a time a group of two would be expected to bring in twenty a week at least."

"Well, we aren't magical girls." Max said, finishing the care of his gun and cocking it with practiced motions. "We're witch hunters. Normal people. Without your tech we wouldn't be able to see the things at all, and our weapons aren't all that effective against them. The fact that for the first time normal humans have killed witches at all should be impressive."

"The technology wasn't available until very recently. And most magical girls don't have the liberty of also being scientists." Samantha said. "And now I'm in charge of three special forces units. Where did I go wrong?" she sighed. "I was supposed to be the one to figure this stuff out and then let other people actually deal with using it."

"Heavens knows you're not a great leader." the boy in the back said, and the girl elbowed him. "Ow! Hey, it's true. She'd do better in a lab building new kit for us full time, rather than have to juggle taking care of us as well."

"I agree." Samantha said. "But the rest of you'd make even worse commanders, so I'm not stepping down just yet."

There was a beeping noise, and one of the monitors flashed red. Samantha got up and looked at the display. Her eyes widened. "Oh, no. Please, not now. Not here. We aren't even remotely ready for this."

"What is it?" Max asked.

"One of the triumvirate." Samantha said quietly. "I think it's Walpurgisnacht, but I could be wrong. The data's a bit fuzzy. 30% chance that it's actually Solace. We're getting manifestation tags like crazy in the nearby area. It'll be here in... maybe fifteen hours."

"Fifteen... hours?" the girl said. "But, this is New York. There are eleven and a half million people in the city here. And you've got better detection tech then they do for this. They won't know remotely soon enough to evacuate."

"So I guess we'd better make sure that it never reaches there, huh?" Samantha said, quickly sending out an all call. "We're going to intercept it. Luckily it's coming down over land, so we have a little bit of an opportunity to set up our battleground. These things are so powerful that they just appear in a place and get their fill of death – they're used to easy victories. If we put up enough resistance, it might just chose another target and pass us by. Maybe."

"Twelve of us against that thing?" Max asked.

"Maybe not. I have some friends, but I don't know how many will be able to get here." Samantha's eyes flashed across the screen. _Come on, someone, please..._

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

_Thirty-seven months after the death of Felicity._

Yana stared at the grief seeds on the table. After a quiet minute, she picked them back up and placed them back into her bag. Sighing, she got up, walked to the front desk, and payed the bill for the food. She walked back to her car, turned it on, and began to drive.

She looked out over the desolate area, the pit in her stomach growing with every passing second. There had to be something that she could do for Moxie, but it was impossible to help someone who refused to allow anyone to get close. Still, it felt wrong just to leave, somehow.

_Of course it feels wrong. You're leaving her to die and you know it._

Yana shook her head. She couldn't leave here, not yet. Even if it took all week, she'd convince Moxie. Somehow. She pulled the car into reverse, heading into town. Hopefully a hotel wouldn't be too expensive.

Suddenly, her car flipped onto its side, spinning through the air briefly before landing upside down ten feet off the road. With controlled calm, Yana transformed, using her magic to blow the door off and escaping the vehicle less than a second before the gas tank burst into flame. She looked around, but there wasn't anything here that could possibly have knocked her off of the road. Scanning slowly, Yana began to turn around.

As she did so, she felt a cold pressure on the back of her neck. Her eyes went wide, and she stopped moving.

"Good. Now, don't try anything." the voice of a young girl told her, and suddenly Yana felt more scared than she had been in a very long time. "Take off your bag. Now."

Yana complied, dropping her bag in the dirt in front of her.

"Good." the girl behind her said. "You're pretty old for this, huh? Must be almost twenty."

"N-nineteen." Yana said. "I've been doing this for three years."

"Three years, not bad." the girl said, walking around to Yana's front and picking up the bag. She had a heavy looking axe held out with one hand, keeping it pressed to Yana's neck. "It would be a real shame to end it here after you'd kept it up for so long, huh?"

"Yes." Yana said, trying her best to seem as non-threatening as possible.

"Well, then I'd suggest not staying around here too much longer." the girl said. "This place is already claimed, do you understand?"

"Yes. I understand." Yana said. "I'm not here to give you any trouble."

"Good!" the girl said. "Keep acting like this and you might get to see the next three years. Now, stand up and start walking."

Yana did as she was told, getting to her feet and starting to walk. After a few steps, however, there was the sound of gunfire, and the younger magical girl turned to face the new threat.

Yana didn't waste a second. She quickly summoned her magical shuriken and threw them in a scatter at the girl. She yelled out as they bit into her flesh. The gunfire started again, closer this time. Yana saw Moxie running at them, her face a mask of calm concentration, as it always was in combat. The other girl swung her axe out at Yana, who barely managed to doge out of the way, but it was clear she was hurt. One of the gunshots met their mark, and the other girl went down. With a quick move, Yana embedded a shuriken into the girl's wrist, forcing her to drop her weapon with a scream. Yana kicked the axe out of the way, and the other girl kicked Yana's feet out from under her. She grabbed Yana's legs as she tried to right herself, removing one of the shuriken from her side and stabbing at Yana with it. Yana felt it cut a gash into her arm, but she managed to use the momentary imbalance that the strike caused to kick the other girl hard in the stomach, pushing her clear. The girl struggled to her feet, but stopped when she heard the cock of Moxie's gun. Moxie was now standing only a few feet from her, her duel pistols aimed dead for the other girl's face. Yana grabbed a rock off of the ground, and slammed her over the head with it. The girl crumpled.

"I had it taken care of at that point." Moxie said, annoyed.

"Yeah. That's what I was worried about." Yana said.

"I wouldn't have killed her." Moxie said defensively.

"What was the plan, then?" Yana said. Moxie didn't respond to that.

Yana sighed, reaching into her bag and taking out a metal cube. With a tug, she pulled the girl's necklace off and placed it in the cube. The girl transformed back into her day clothes with a flash. She then took out a little torch. Carefully, she sealed the cube so that it couldn't be opened. She placed the sealed cube in the girls hand, then, as a afterthought, attached it to her wrist with a pair of handcuffs.

"What was that?" Moxie asked.

"She won't be able to transform if she can't contact her soul gem. She's on probation until she can find someone to cut that box open. Which, most likely, she'll have to travel to a nearby city to do. It'll also show her very clearly that we could have killed her easily if we had wanted to. This should get her out of your hair, hopefully permanently." Yana said.

Moxie didn't respond to that. Yana sighed, then stood up. "She's yours, I guess. I don't actually know what she'd done, or how dangerous she is, but this should stop the both of you from doing anything rash. If she's enough trouble that you still want to kill her after you've managed to open that box, then she's probably dangerous enough to warrant it."

Moxie didn't say anything for a moment. Then she sighed and looked up at Yana. "Thanks."

"No problem." Yana said. "I want to help you, you know."

Moxie hesitated. "You'll need a place to stay, now that you don't have a car." she said tentatively.

Yana smacked herself. "Oh, god, your right. She kind of destroyed my car, didn't she?" she laughed sheepishly.

"I suppose you could stay with me, for now." Moxie said. "Just until you get a way out of here."

"Right." Yana said. "Of course. Just until I get a way out."

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

_ Forty months after the death of Felicity._

"I'm really glad you guys showed." Samantha said. "God knows we need the help."

"Yeah, but we're a team. Sort of." Yana said. "Of course we showed." She'd brought Moxie along with her, which Samantha found surprising, but she wasn't about to complain. Hanna and Leah had shown up as well, as had Nancy. Most of the others were simply too far away to reach them in time, but had sent their wishes and advice. Kara had even tried to reach them from Japan, but the quickest flight here would have taken her seventeen hours, just too long. It was touching how her friends were willing to drop everything to try to come to her aid.

She just hoped it would be enough.

"Ten minutes until manifestation." Max said, reading off of the display. It was raining slightly, the dreary September day weighing on them. Or perhaps that was the storm that followed the witch. "Readings indicate a 97% chance that it's Solace." He looked at Samantha. "It's weird, though. Solace is usually active in the winter, and it's followed by a deep, dry calm. This weather is much more Walpurgisnacht's style."

"No one's started blowing up into bloody smears, so it's not Kali at least." Hanna said, the others laughing nervously.

"We're going to be fine." Nancy affirmed. "Usually it's single girls, or teams of two or three, that try to go up against these things. And even they sometimes do enough to get them to leave. We've got six girls and eleven of Samantha's warriors. We stand a better chance than most ever had."

"We've got a surge!" Max said. "It's coming early!"

Everyone tensed. A grey mass began to accumulate some three hundred feet in front of them, growing in size quickly. The ground rippled outwards from it, and the rocks began to move back and forth rhythmic. A sweet, sad song started playing, making it hard to concentrate. Samantha struggled with her controls for a second, then managed to turn on her magical sound canceling headphones. She saw the little green lights going on on the other's headsets as well. She signaled her readiness, which the others responded to with clear determination and quick ready signals of their own.

_Time to fight,_ Samantha thought, then leaped into battle, the others following in the artificial dead silence which surrounded them.

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

_ Thirty-nine months after the death of Felicity._

Kara looked down at the note in her hand, then over at the unconscious 27-year-old woman and her crying one-year-old daughter. She didn't say a word, didn't make a sound, dropping the note to the floor. Ferra turned to her, cocking her head.

"Something important?" she asked.

Kara didn't answer, instead walking over and checking the woman for any major damage. Finding none, she stood back up, turning back to the street.

"Make sure she gets home safely." she said, already beginning to walk away.

Ferra shook her head, but took the woman by the arms, preparing to carry her. Once Kara had left the area, she turned and picked up the note. It was written in Japanese, so it took her a moment to translate.

Her name is Tomoe Hiromi. The daughter is Tomoe Mami. Make sure they stay safe. Keep an eye out for them in the future. Do not introduce yourself under any circumstances until 2013 at the earliest.

-FH

P.S. - See you in thirteen years.

**&amp;^%^&amp;**

_ Thirty-three months after the death of Felicity._

_"Is the interface working?"_

_ "Affirmative. The construct is fully formed. Consciousness data is 99.8% done recovery. Beginning wake up protocol now."_

_"Prepare for wake up."_

The girl opened her eyes, blinking in the harsh light around her. She was stunned momentarily, her mind fuzzy. Something seemed vaguely amiss to her, but she couldn't place what. She tried to think what it could be, before gasping with shock. Her identity was missing. She had no idea who she was. Memories flickered in and out of her consciousness, but she couldn't hold onto any.

"Please, calm down." a voice said, and the girl turned to face a strange looking white catlike creature, with long floppy ears and bright blood red eyes. Instinctively, she felt distrust of the creature, despite it's appearance. She gave it a cold look.

"What are you?" she asked. "Why am I here?"

"We are the incubators." the cat thing said, giving her a cute look. "We have reconstructed you from your residual data after death. How are you feeling, Felicity Harbor?"

Felicity looked down at herself, hugging her naked body tightly with her arms. "I'm scared." she said truthfully. "I don't understand what's happening."

"Your memories have been uploading to you slowly." the incubator said. "You may have recall problems initially."

"Why did you... reconstruct me?" Felicity asked.

"During your lifetime, you managed to develop a model of human emotional reaction far more advanced than any we possess. To further our cause, we wanted to use your mathematics of psychosociology to make better and more accurate predictions of human psychology. With your help, we can jump a thousand years in understanding of humanity in a few months!"

"I see." Felicity said.

"In exchange for your help, we will permit you to live out a second life here." the incubator said. "If you give us enough to allow for our own models to progress without your assistance, we may even allow you to return to your home, under certain restrictions."

"I... see." Felicity said.

"Are you making any progress with your memory?" the incubator asked. Felicity shook her head, then paused. Something was building in the back of her mind, filling her head with knowledge and energy. She closed her eyes, then flashed them open, smiling.

"Oh, yes, I've gotten my memories back." Felicity said, quickly hiding her smile. Everything was going according to plan, of course. After all, she was a human-incubator interface. It wasn't just human psychology that she had made models for. If anything, figuring out how to play incubators had been easier. Six months, and she'd be in a position to begin starting the fifth phase of her plan – removal of the incubators from earth for good. It would be a long process, much more difficult to handle; but she had a good head on her shoulders.

"What do you remember?" the incubator asked.

"I used to live on earth. I had an older sister, but I can't place her name. I had magic, I think. And..." she bit her lip, acting for all the world to be attempting a difficult recall. "Do you have a piece of paper?" she said. "There's an equation in my head. I can't really understand it yet, but I could copy it down."

The incubator dipped its head and left to fetch Felicity paper. Once it was gone, Felicity let out a sigh. This was going to be a hard act to pull off, but she was already calculating forward for the incubator's response. Play off of their fears, their wants, their needs. Tie them up and force them to push themselves to the edge. Just thirteen and a half years, and she'd be done. Or, at least, she'd have a 87.46% chance of being done.

Now, to start...

**Authors note:**

So, that was a thing! I hope you liked the thing. This started out as just a fan theory as to how the magical girl population, which grew linearly, could ever hope to control the witch populations, which grew exponentially. Instead of posting the idea on some forum, I decided to turn it into a story, and suddenly this happened. I expected this to be about half the length it ended up, but it still seems sort of rushed at the end anyway. Oh well.

I don't have all that much to say about it, really. I think it does what it needs to and does so competently. It's not going to win story of the month, but it's easy enough to read and hopefully engaging enough to not feel like a waste of time. I'm neither really happy or particularly upset with how it turned out. Maybe I'm talking up my own butt and it's really awful; if so, feel free to let me know in a review! And, if you liked it, I'd appreciate if you'd also write a review! Watching my 'Favorites' number tick upwards is nice and all, but it tells me basically nothing about what you actually liked, and makes it harder to improve my writing. I'd rather a bad review that told me what I did wrong than a 'favorite' with no explanation.


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